


Shadows in the Forest

by ZuraStar



Category: The Forest - Fandom
Genre: Blood, Death, Mentions of Suicide, Psychological Horror, Psychological Trauma, Suicide, attempted suicide, bodies, but changed around to make it "better", hopefully, mention of relationship but no focus on it, ptsd mention, same characters same universe with a few OCs added, supernatural horror, this is basically an adaptation of the movie The Forest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-14 17:42:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 26,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9196517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZuraStar/pseuds/ZuraStar
Summary: When her twin sister goes missing, Sera goes to Japan to find her.  The search leads to a mysterious forest called Aiokigahara- known also by it's darker name: Suicide Forest.  The forest is known for it's dark past, and for the vengeful, angry Yūrei that haunt the trees and lure the depressed to their deaths.In a race to outrun her past and find her sister before she does the unthinkable, Sera ends up the one who needs saving.





	1. The Monsters Come

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to my friend Squidley for helping inspire me to start and finish this work!

An ocean of trees smother the hills for miles all around. Forest so dense that running is nearly impossible- but running is all that will keep her alive.

The tree limbs snag at her clothes and skin as if they were hands trying to snatch her back. Every root and rock hidden in the darkness is determined to trip her.

One fall, even a brief stall, will spell her death.

Her stalker will catch her. It will kill her.

Worse than the dark, even worse than the pursuer drawing ever closer, is the deafening silence. No insects, no animals, not even wind. The only sound that cuts through the quiet is her heaving breath, her stampeding footsteps, and the steadily approaching footfalls of the evil following her.

“Someone help me!” she screams. Whether she honestly thinks someone will hear or if she’s just trying to break through the silence she isn’t sure. Either way, she’s desperate.

The ragged branches grab her dark hair, scratch her arms, cut her face.

“Help me!”

Her legs burn, her eyes water, her lungs are ready to collapse.

She can feel wicked breath on her neck-

 

With a gasp, Sera startles awake. She clutches her chest and holds her breath in the dark.

She’s in bed.

Not in a forest.

She was sleeping.

Not running for her life.

She takes in a deep breath and tries to calm the heartbeat hammering in her chest.

Once she’s awake enough to be sure she’s not about to die, she reaches for her phone and unlocks the screen. She ignores the ache in her eyes as they protest to the bright light, and finds Jess’s name in her contacts.

She dials, and the call goes straight to voicemail.

“ _Konichiwa. This is Jess, leave a message._ ”

She drops the phone onto the nightstand and he flicks the lamp on.

“Sera?” the man in bed beside her stirs. Sera’s out of bed and at the closet, turning on the light and pulling out a suitcase before he can get his barrings.

“Jess is in trouble.”

He’s too tired to even try to repress his sigh. “Another nightmare?”

“This is more than just the dreams. I’ve put this off for too long.” She moves with purpose, removing clothes from the closet and dresser and packing them into the suitcase.

He sits up stiffly and swings his legs over the side of the bed.

The clock reads just past two in the morning. He looks over at Sera, who is changing out of pajamas and into jeans and a white sweater- which nearly matches her pale hair.

“It’s the middle of the night,” he reasons. “You’re going to fly to Japan right now?”

“You know I’ve been trying to get a hold of her for days. She hasn’t been showing up for work, the police won’t believe that she’s missing, and the last time I spoke with her… she seemed off. Distant.”

“Yeah, and when has Jess ever been moody and dropped off radar.”

Sera stops packing to stare at her boyfriend. “This is different,” she insists. “She’s my sister, my twin. I can tell the difference between her… _episodes_ , and when something is wrong. I’m telling you, Aiden, something is _wrong_. I should have gone days ago.”

Aiden rubs his face again and stands. He walks over to Sera and places his hands on her shoulders. “She always does this to you. She always needs you Sera, and you _always_ run to her aid. She’s an adult, you know…”

Sera brushes him off and moves to the dresser. “She’s my sister.” She locks eyes with him. “I owe her this much.”

Aiden shakes his head and tries to rub the sleep out of his eyes. “If you need to do this, than I understand. I just hope you stop to think about what about what you owe to yourself, too.”

Sera doesn’t say anything to this. She looks away and fixes her eyes on the dresser.

“I think that you should at least wait until morning, okay?” He walks up behind her and presses a kiss to her neck. “It’s late. If she doesn’t call by morning, decide then. Okay?”

Sera places her arms on top of Aiden’s when he snakes them around her waist, but doesn’t say anything.

He places another kiss on her neck before he yawns. He leaves the bedroom, closing the door behind him.

Sera glances back at the mattress. She already knows that she’s not going to be able to sleep. If this time _is_ different, if there _is_ something wrong- she’ll never forgive herself for not doing all she can to be there. She already feels guilty for the time she’s put off.

She grabs out handfuls of socks and underwear out of the top drawer and adds them to her suitcase on the bed. She returns to the dresser to slip on her watch and a pair of earrings.

Lastly is the necklace Jess mailed to her- a black cord strung through a stone with a hole straight through it. She gingerly touches the pendant and cord in the small white box. The black stone is a natural, odd shape with smooth, curved edges.

She slowly lifts it.

One of her hands grips the edge of the dresser while the other clasps around the stone. Her eyes screw shut.

Jess has to be alright.

Sera can’t fathom something happening to her twin.

When she opens her eyes again, she focuses on the paper in the bottom of the necklace’s box. Only part of the text is visible on the folded sheet.

She’s read the printed poem before, and doesn’t prefer to read it again. Jess always had a flair for the macabre, and right now she’s not sure if she can stomach it. Still, her eyes fix on the few showing lines.

 

_The monsters come_

_And leave us numb._

_We’re broken, bleeding, and blind._

 

_A long…_

 

“You’re still going to go, aren’t you?”

Aiden’s sudden voice nearly makes Sera knock the mirror off the dresser. “Jesus, Aiden, don’t scare me like that.” She eyes him as he pulls the second suitcase out of the closet. “I thought you said I should wait ‘til morning.”

“Yeah, well, I realized that you aren’t going to listen to me anyway. Might as well join you.”

Sera clasps the necklace around her neck. “You don’t have to do this.”

He chuckles softly at that. “Yeah, I do. You have to for Jess. I have to for you. I just looked, I have a week of vacation days saved up. I’ll call my boss in the morning and let her know I’m spending them.”

She interrupts his packing by pressing into his space, and pulling him into a tight hug. “Thank you,” she whispers.

“Of course.” He presses a kiss into her hair.

 

Sera tries Jess’s number again once they’re at the airport.

“ _Konichiwa. This is Jess, leave a-_ ”

She ends the call and drops the phone onto the bench seat that her and Aiden share. She buries her face in her hands, takes in a deep breath, and slowly lets it out.

“She’s done this before,” Aiden gently reminds her and rubs a hand up and down her back. “I’m sure she’s fine.”

Sera nods half-heartedly and averts her gaze to the others passengers waiting to fly. The airport is decently full considering the time of night. Her eyes fall on a girl standing still amongst the crowd- a girl who is staring straight at her.

Sera straightens her posture and stares right back.

“Sera?” Aiden asks, but Sera doesn’t look away.

The girl is Japanese with long, black hair. She looks to be no older than sixteen and wears what looks like a blue and white school uniform. The crowd busily moves around her, not addressing the girl standing completely still in the middle of the busy walkway. She doesn’t blink. She doesn’t move an inch- she just keeps her eyes fixed on Sera.

Sera stands up.

The girl’s lips pull into a wide smile. They keep pulling across her face unnaturally, as though they won’t stop spreading until they split her face in half.

A group of tourists pass by, and in the brief time they block the line of sight- the girl is gone.

Sera takes two steps closer and frantically searches the crowd.

“Sera?” Aiden says again and stands next to her, putting his hand on her shoulder. “What is it? What did you see?”

“I saw…” her whisper trails off as she realizes she’s not going to be able to find her again. “I thought I saw…”

Aiden squeezes her shoulder. “It’s been a long night,” he comforts. “You’ll get to sleep on the plane.”

A woman over the intercom announces their flight is about to leave. They gather their luggage, pointedly ignoring the strange looks they’re receiving from the others waiting in the chairs around them.


	2. Leave Us Numb

Leaves crunch under her feet with every step.

There are no birds calling.

There are no bugs singing.

She is alone. She is the only one making noise as she weaves her way through the never ending trees.

“ _Sera_.”

 

Sera jumps so hard she smacks her head against the wall of the plane.

Aiden’s eyes are filled with worry from the seat next to hers.

She dismissively shrugs and looks out the window as the plane lowers for landing.

Once they disembark, they hail a cab from the airport and instruct the driver to take them to the hotel they have booked.

Sera spends the entire ride looking out the window, until Aiden pulls her attention away.

“Are you doing okay?” he asks.

If he’s trying to hide being unsettled, he’s doing a poor job of it.

“I’m fine,” she says as convincingly as she can.

“I thought doing this would make you feel better,” he says. “It seems you’re worse than before.”

“I’m fine,” she says firmer. He gives her a look, so she relaxes her tone. “I’m just… anxious to find her, is all. I promise, I’m fine.”

He nods. He’s about to say something else, but the cabbie speaks up and cuts him off.

“Yes, you fine, you fine,” he assures, oddly nervous. “No worry, you find her.”

“Thank you,” Sera says to be polite, and shares a glance with Aiden- who looks just as confused as she is. He shrugs and looks out his window. She looks out her own as they come to a red light.

Sera takes in the sight of the people walking down the neon-lit street, either purposely on their way or standing in groups and chatting. Her musings on how different Japan’s culture looks to America’s are cut short.

Every hair on the back of her neck stands when her eyes fall on a girl already staring at her- with long dark hair, in a school uniform, her lips pulling into a smile-

A smack on the window and crazed eyes make her scream.

The man with scraggly hair that just slammed on her window laughs and points at her. He’s to preoccupied with laughing to even beg for money.

Aiden mutters disdainfully about crazy homeless people as the man continues on to the next car, still overcome with laughter.

Sera takes a few breaths and tries to find the girl again- but the cabbie pulls away and the view is lost.

 

As soon as they arrive at the hotel and settle their luggage, Aiden claims the shower.

Sera flips a switch near the door. The shutters on the wall-length window across the room rise up to expose the sparkling city that reaches all the way to the horizon.

She walks over to the glass. The sight is beautiful- she only wishes she was here to see it for any other reason.

Here to _visit_ her sister, instead of _find_ her. Visit like Jess always wanted her to, like Sera always wanted to- but never found the time for.

When she finally turns away from the view, she decides to call Jess again. She sifts through the bags looking for her phone, checks her pockets, her purse- but can’t find it.

“Hey, babe?” Sera calls.

“Sera?” Aiden calls back, muffled through the walls.

She walks over to the bathroom door and pushes it open enough to be heard clearly. “Have you seen my phone?”

“Uh, not since you called Jess last,” he answers before ducking his head under the spraying water.

“ _Shit_ ,” she mutters. “I think I left it at the airport- I don’t remember grabbing it.”

“Shit,” he agrees. “Not much we can do about it now. Just use mine.”

Sera pinches the bridge of her nose. He’s right, of course. Her phone was surely snatched, and even if it was returned to lost and found- there’s no getting it from half a world away before they plan to be on their way back.

With a sigh she strides over to the table and picks up Aiden’s phone. She dials Jess’s number.

“ _Konichiwa. This is Jess, leave a message._ ”

Sera lets the phone go through to voice-mail this time instead of cutting the message short. She waits until after the beep to say, “Jess, it’s me, Sera. I lost my phone so, if you get these messages, call this number, okay?” She worries her lip between her teeth, trying to think of what else to say. The inbox decides for her when it beeps again and cuts the message off there.

She sighs and sets the phone back down on the table.

More to keep herself busy than anything, she sets to work on unpacking their luggage. Half way through Aiden’s bag, she finds his camera case. She purses her lips and, a little rougher than necessary, drops the camera on the table.

He’s a professional photographer, so it really shouldn’t surprise her. He takes the damn camera everywhere.

But they’re not here to take pictures. The thought that Aiden brought his camera along like this was some work or pleasure trip makes her irritated. They’re here for one thing only: to find her sister.

When she finds her laptop, she snags one of the bags of snacks they bought on the way in and climbs into the bed with it.

Firstly, she looks up the address of the school Jess works at and maps the route from the hotel to there. She tries to think of anything else she needs to do to prepare for tomorrow’s search, and comes up short.

After some time staring at the blank desktop and several handfuls of the pretzel snack later, she decides to look over Jess’s blog.

It’s no surprise to see it hasn’t updated. Jess hasn’t posted anything new since last talking to Sera. That doesn’t stop her from scrolling through the images of her sister, though. She rereads the same stories for the hundredth time, and watches the old videos that Jess had posted ages ago.

“ _Happy birthday to us_ ,” she listens to herself sing.

Sera smiles fondly at the video of Jess leaning over their birthday cake, iced with the words “Happy Birthday To Us”.

“ _Stop- stop messing around_ ,” Sera’s recorded voice says jovially as Jess acts like she’s going to take a bite out of the cake. “ _Happy birthday, to- us_.” Jess blows out one candle, and then holds out the cake toward the camera for Sera to blow out the other.

Sera sighs as she watches the second candle go out, and the frame goes entirely dark. She swallows thickly and continues to scroll. She passes pictures of her and Jess when they were kids, and pictures of her students. Sera stalls on an image of Jess with a bottle close to her lips, titled “I’m here, there’s beer!”.

She sighs again, rubs her hands down her face, and digs her knuckles into her eyes.

“I wish you’d just _call_ me _back_ ,” she grits out.

And then the phone rings.

Sera’s out of bed so fast that the laptop clatters to the floor.

She scrambles to the phone and is immediately disappointed by the caller ID. She’s tempted to let the call go to voice-mail but decides it’s most polite to answer.

“Hello, Ms. Callaghan, this is Sera. Aiden is in the shower right now.”

“Oh, hello Sera. I was just calling to let him know it’s fine to take the rest of his vacation days, Erik is going to fill in for him.”

“That’s excellent, thank you so much-”

“You two must be having quite the time,” Ms. Callaghan muses, “taking another vacation.”

“I’m sorry?” Sera says.

“The trip you two took last week? Aiden has had two weeks of vacation days saved up for quite some time now- said he’s been wanting to treat you to some time off. Looks like he’s spoiling you with it all at once,” she says playfully.

Sera wants to question her further but doesn’t get the chance.

“Ah- afraid I must go. Have a nice trip.”

“Thank you,” she barely gets out before Ms. Callaghan hangs up.

There was no trip last week, at least not with both of them. Aiden had a business trip to Oregon around a week ago, but that wouldn’t have cost him vacation days…

“I heard the phone ring,” Aiden says, startling Sera as he comes out of the bathroom.

“Your boss called…”

He senses her reluctance. “Everything alright?”

She grapples with bringing it up or leaving it alone.

“Did Erik decide to back out on filling in for me?” Aiden asks and dries his hair.

“She thought we took a trip together last week,” Sera says.

Aiden stalls drying his hair for a moment, but continues as he strides over to his suitcase to find some clothes to sleep in. “That’s odd. I wonder why she thought that.”

“She said you had two weeks of vacation days, and spent half of it a week ago…”

Aiden shrugs it off. “She must be getting me mixed up with someone else. It’s not like she has the time to get to know all of her employees. Really, I’m surprised she knows my name.”

She doesn’t push it any further. Accepting his explanation and sleeping sounds a lot more appealing than continuing to press the issue. Maybe once she finds Jess she’ll bring it up again, but until then, all she wants to focus on is finding her sister.


	3. Broken

_“Sera.”_

_Sera walks down a dim hallway. A closed door is ahead of her, and she slowly makes her way straight for it._

_The silence makes the doorknob sound abnormally loud as she takes it into her hand. She twists the dark knob, but it’s locked in place._

_“Sera.”_

_She turns toward the voice, back down the hall. She walks back timidly until she comes to a desk along the wall with a black birthday cake resting on it. It has two lit candles._

_Her eyes leave the cake to look to the mirror hanging on the wall above it. In place of where her reflection should be, stands her twin._

_“Jess-” Sera gasps and reaches for the glass._

_Jess perfectly matches her movement, like a reflection. Her facial expression is all that doesn’t mimic. Her look is flat, dark. “You were supposed to stay.”_

_The confusion that becomes Sera is silenced by the sound of a zipper slowly dragging open. Sera’s eyes leave her sister to rest on a yellow tent in the mirror’s background._

_Sera turns to face the yellow tent being reflected. She steps toward it before glancing back to the mirror._

_Jess is gone. Nothing stands where she was, where Sera’s reflection should be._

_Sera approaches the tent. The sound of a zipper slowly dragging open still emanates from it. It’s not until Sera’s kneeling next to the tent’s opening that the zipper finishes pulling apart. The flap falls open._

_Inside sits nine-year-old Jess._

_“You,” Jess whispers so quietly that Sera has to lean forward to hear her._

_“Should.” Jess becomes even quieter, drawing Sera even closer._

_“Have…”_

_Sera looks into her sister’s eyes, trying to understand- waiting for her to go on._

_Two hands slap against the side of Sera’s face and don’t allow her to pull away. Her face blooms with black veins where Jess’s hands touch her. They string to her eyes, across her features, slithering under her skin._

_“Stayed!” Jess finishes in a wailing scream. Her face elongates, dragging her screaming mouth with it._

 

Sera screams when she wakes. She frantically pushes Jess’s hands off of her face, but of course there’s nothing there.

“Sera, Sera!” Aiden panics, sitting up almost as fast as Sera has.

She leaps out of bed and puts her hands on her head, trying to calm herself.

“Deep breaths,” Aiden coaxes. “It was another nightmare, Sera. You’re safe.”

Sera’s eyes slip closed.

 

It takes little time to reach Jess’s school. They arrive in the morning, before lunchtime. The halls are empty but echo with the sound of the classes underway.

“Says the office is this way,” Aiden says and nods to one of the signs on the wall when they reach an intersection. He continues the way the sign points.

Sera, however, doesn’t follow. She’s drawn to a hallway to the right. It’s so long that it looks like it might span the entire length of the building.

She takes ten steps down the hall before Aiden notices she’s not behind him.

“Sera? We should check in first…”

She’s about to call back to him when her eyes fall on one of the classroom signs. Underneath a set of Japanese characters, the name “Miss Jess Price” is spelled out in English.

“Sera- wait-” Aiden tries but Sera’s already pushing open the door.

The students inside stop reciting the English sentences they were learning as soon as the door opens. Every head turns toward Sera, and immediately fall into horrified expressions.

The students gasp and lean away, looking either ready to run for their lives or paralyzed with fear.

One girl is so frightened that she screams at the top of her lungs.

 

It takes a lot of explaining, translating, and reassuring to calm the situation down. Eventually, Sera, Aiden, the principle, and the girl who screamed gather in the principle’s office to speak.

The girl’s hand tremors as she brings a glass of water to her lips.

The principle says something to the girl in Japanese, coaxing her to talk.

The girl sets the glass down and whispers something. Her shoulders are tense, and her eyes are fixed on the principle’s desk.

The principle nods and then turns to Sera. “She thought you were Miss Jess. She’s ashamed.”

Sera smiles sympathetically at the girl. “We’re twins.”

“I, am, sorry,” the girl says slowly.

Sera nods. “It’s okay. But, why were you scared?” she asks, glancing at the principle so that she will translate.

When the girl answers, speaking to the principle, her voice is frantic, terrified even.

The principle comfortingly touches the girls shoulder to calm her down. “She saw your light hair, and thought you were… a Yūrei.”

“A Yūrei?” Sera asks.

“A ghost.”

Sera tries to smile despite her stomach knotting up. She addresses the girl while she speaks even though she knows that the principle will have to translate all of her words. “It’s okay. We’re identical, except for our hair. We’ve always joked that she stole all the pigment while we were in the womb, and I ended up with none.”

Aiden reaches over and squeezes Sera’s knee, and she places her hand on top.

“But, if Jess has only been gone for under a week, why would you think that she’d be a ghost?”

The principle’s lips press together tightly. She turns to the girl and translates the explanation. She doesn’t need to ask her the question Sera asked before answering. “She knows your sister went into Aokigahara.” Her grave tone doesn’t help Sera’s nerves.

“Ao- Aok-”

“Aokigahara,” the principle repeats.

“What is that?” Sera asks.

The principle squares her shoulders. “Aokigahara is also known as the suicide forest. In old times it was a place for ubasute.”

“Suicide?” Aiden interjects.

Sera shakes her head, not understanding.

“When there wasn’t enough food, families would bring the elderly, the blind, or sick to the forest and… leave them to die. Today, it is a place many travel to, to commit suicide. The students took a trip there. Miss Jess was one of the chaperons.”

Sera’s ears ring. “That’s… awful. I don’t understand- why would the school take a class trip there?”

“Mount Fuji is very beautiful,” the principle defends. “And important to history. Aokigahara is simply part of the mountain.”

The girl speaks up again.

The principle tightly nods and turns back to repeat what she said. “People say spirits cannot rest there. They come back.”

The girl interrupts, insistently saying the same phrase twice.

The principles lips purse before she translates for Sera. “Angry. They come back angry. They come back Yūrei.”

Sera takes a deep breath, trying to keep her composure. “And Jess, she went into this forest, and?”

The principle suddenly looks very uncomfortable. “We tried to contact police, but they will not take a missing person’s report on rumors.”

“Rumors?” Aiden asks.

“What’s been said?” Sera presses.

The principle locks eyes with Sera. “Students saw your sister walk into Aokigahara alone, while on the trip. They say, when she came back, she was… different. Strange.” The woman flattens her skirt. “The next day, when she didn’t come to school, they blamed the forest. But this is just rumors, children make up stories. Still, we informed police that Miss Jess wasn’t coming to work or answering calls. But, without more evidence she is missing in Aokigahara, they will not search for her.”

“Why didn’t you mention this before, when Sera called and asked days ago?” Aiden presses angrily.

“Please,” Sera silences, staring Aiden down for a moment before turning back to the principle. “Can we see Jess’s room?”

The principle contemplates for a moment. She dismisses the student, who stands and gives a low bow. The girl locks eyes with Sera, eerily full of worry, before rushing out.

“Normally, I respect privacy,” the principle says and pulls a set of keys out of her desk. “But… because you are family, I will make an exception.” She stands gestures for them to follow.

After a short walk to the housing area of the school, they come to Jess’s door. Sera enters Jess’s room behind the principle. They leave the light off, but plenty of sunlight spills in between the curtains to illuminate the room.

“Thank you, for this,” Sera says, and the principle returns a curt nod.

Sera and Aiden comb the room, looking through bags and bins for anything that might hint at where Jess has gone. The third drawer of the wooden desk that Sera searches holds a pile of photographs. She pulls the top one out.

It’s a photograph, an old one, frayed at the edges and faded. Jess and Sera, no older than twelve, stand in the middle of the driveway to their grandmother’s home. They wear matching dresses with matching ice-creams, the only difference between the two of them being their drastically different colored hair. Sera remembers this very photograph framed in their grandmother’s house.

Her finger runs along the discolored edge around the photo, where the frame once blocked the sunlight from fading it. She tries to hold back tears as she remembers the day.

 

_Jess holds the framed photograph in her hand, standing in the middle of their grandmother’s living room. Her other hand is full of porcelain birds that she still needs to pack into a box._

_“Jess, do you have the packing tape?” Sera asks as she comes into the room and catches her sister staring at the picture. She sets down the cardboard box she was carrying. Before she can ask if Jess is alright, Jess carelessly sets the birds down on a stack of old plates. “Hey! Those could be worth something,” Sera says._

_“They’re from the stone-age,” Jess argues as she places the picture frame in one of the boxes with her name on the side._

_“Didn’t grandma say they were collector’s items?” Sera asks._

_“She also said Aiden was gay because he parted his hair to the right,” Jess sasses back._

_Sera smirks and shrugs. “Point taken.” Sera looks at a nearby shelf with random figurines and vases. She picks up a jar to pack it away._

_“Careful with that jar,” Jess says._

_Sera looks over at her sister curiously. “Why, she keep her stash in it?” Sera jokes._

_Jess’s face goes serious. “She kept grandpa in it.”_

_Sera’s face falls and she lifts the lid to expose an empty inside._

_Jess laughs and folds up a lace table runner._

_“You’re terrible,” Sera says before joining in on the laughter._

 

Sera taps the photograph against her fingers a few times before slipping it into her back pocket. While Aiden thoroughly goes through a trashcan, Sera searches the desk against the wall. A set of orange bottles catch her eye. She picks one up.

The pharmacy label has Jess’s name on it, followed by the highlighted words “FOR ANXIETY 10 MG TAB”.

It’s no surprise. Sera’s known about Jess’s struggles and the meds she takes to help with them- but it’s no less easy to see the bottles lined up in front of her. She rolls her lip between her teeth and looks up to the ceiling in a desperate attempt to bite back tears.

It’s no surprise. But with Jess missing- after recently visiting a forest renown for suicide… The pills only thicken Sera’s regret of not doing something sooner, not doing more.

Sera glances at the principle standing near the door. The woman politely turns her look of sympathy toward the floor.

After returning the bottle, Sera lifts a couple of pamphlets off the desk. One is a map of Aokigahara, and another a booklet of information on the mountain itself. These pamphlets aren’t proof that her sister is there. After all, she was a chaperon for a field trip to the area.

But it’s enough for Sera.

If Jess is anywhere, it’s going to be Aokigahara.


	4. Bleeding

_“So, when was the last time you saw grandma?” Jess asks as folds a lace curtain._

_Sera finishes wrapping the jar in her hands in a cloth, and tucks it into a box. “Six months ago.”_

_“I feel bad,” Jess admits. “We just… abandoned her. Went off to do our own thing.”_

_“She understood,” Sera says. “We needed to start our lives.”_

_Jess huffs. “I’m about to start mine all over again.”_

_Sera stops packing to look sincerely to her twin. “I’m sure it’ll be great, Jess. I’m proud of you.”_

_“Tokyo isn’t exactly the next town over,” Jess says with a shrug._

_“It’ll be good for you. Plus, it’ll give me an excuse to get on a plane every once in a while,” Sera says._

_“You better.”_

 

The train trucks through the countryside on the way to Mount Fuji, passing by small towns that are few and far between. Sera was lost in her thoughts until Aiden pulls her out of it.

Aiden drops the pamphlet in his lap and rubs his eyes. “Over a hundred people committed suicide in 2010. A _hundred_ , all in this forest. They’ve stopped posting the body count because the numbers were getting so high, and they didn’t want it to encourage anyone else. This sounds like the sort of place _your_ sister would go hiking for fun.”

Sera sighs. “She does like… _dark_ things,” she concedes, and goes back to staring out the window at the passing trees.

After a moment, as sensitively as he can, Aiden says, “Sera. We need to start thinking of the possibility… that she, that Jess…”

“No,” Sera says firmly and looks away from the window. “No.”

“She’s tried before. The pamphlet even says the most common cause of death is drug overdose. It was just a few years ago that Jess-”

“Stop right there,” Sera warns. “It was a dark time for her. A lot caught up to her then. But she got help.”

Aiden’s shoulders drop as he shakes his head.

“You know what she’s been through, the burden she’s carried all these years,” she says hotly. “But coming to Japan was a new start for her. She was happy here, better. She wouldn’t.”

“I just think we should start considering the possibility,” he says and leaves it there.

The announcer comes over the loudspeaker and says that they’re approaching their next stop, Aokigahara.

Sera is turning toward the window again when someone catches her eye. A man in a business suit stares at her distastefully. She hold his eye contact for a moment before darting her gaze out the window.

The train comes to a stop and Aiden and Sera get off. Other than a group of three or so tourists down the platform, Sera and Aiden are the only ones that got off. They watch the train continue on it’s way for a moment, before taking in their surroundings.

The train tracks, the small old platform, and a road splitting the trees ahead of them are the only signs of people. All around them, thick, tall trees blanket the landscape.

Without a word, Sera steps off the platform and across the tracks, heading for the road. She can hear Aiden’s footsteps following. Singing birds, humming insects, and their footfalls fill the silence between them.

After a few minutes of walking, Sera hears the distinct sound of a camera’s shutter snapping in quick succession. She whirls around and glares at Aiden, who lowers the camera from his eye.

“What are you doing?” she demands.

“What? It was a good shot, look-”

Sera turns around and continues to stride down the road.

“Come on, I’m not allowed to take pictures?”

“I just think we should be more focused on finding Jess than taking photographs,” Sera says without turning around.

“I just wanted to take advantage of the trip, since we’re in Japan anyway.”

After a decent amount of walking, a small house abruptly comes into view. It stands directly along the road, oddly feeling right at place despite being such a contrast to the thick nature all around it.

As soon as Sera’s through the door, a woman greets her.

“Konichiwa,” she says cheerily.

“Hi,” Sera says. She pulls Aiden’s phone out of her pocket and pulls up a picture of Jess as she says, “I’m looking for my sister. She came here on a trip with her school, and disappeared.” Sera holds the phone across the counter the woman stands behind so that she can see Jess’s face. “Have you seen her?” she points to Jess, who has her arm around Sera’s shoulders in the photo.

“Yes. We find.”

“You found her?” Aiden says breathlessly.

“You found Jess?” Sera asks.

The woman slowly gives one nod.

“Oh my- where, where is she?”

“She here. I take you.”

Sera stares, dumbfounded, as the woman calls for her daughter Sakura to take over the register for her. The woman makes her way over to a door, opens it up, and turns back to Sera and Aiden who still stand in place. She gives an encouraging nod and begins descending down the stairs.

Sera looks over to Sakura, a girl around the age of seventeen, who pointedly avoids eye contact with either her or Aiden. Sera’s jaw tightens as she makes her way over to the door the woman disappeared through.

“I don’t like this,” Aiden says, staying close behind.

At the top of the stairs Sera stalls, looking down the dark stone and concrete stairway that wafts cool, damp air upstairs. Every wooden step creeks as the woman makes her way down. “What is this?” Sera dares to ask.

The woman turns back toward her. “Basement,” she answers, before continuing down.

“No way,” Aiden mumbles. “There’s no way we’re going down there.”

Once at the bottom the woman turns back again. “You come?”

Sera takes a shaky breath in and takes the first step down.

“Sera-” Aiden starts, but Sera ignores him. “I’m not going down there,” Rob asserts again.

The woman gives a sad smile as she waits for Sera to traverse every step down. She goes around the corner once Sera reaches her.

Sera looks back to Aiden, who stubbornly stays at the top of the stairs. She looks back to the woman, who makes her way down a florescent lit hallway.

“Keep the bodies here, when they find. Keep them cold,” the woman says, stalling again when she realizes Sera hasn’t followed her yet.

Sera’s hand finds the stone pendant hanging around her neck and clasps it tightly. “The bodies?” Sera asks heavily.

“Someone must stay with them, at all time,” the woman says and nods to a man who sits at a chair by the door at the end of the short hall. The man has headphones covering his ears. The music is so loud that Sera can hear it from where she stands, still locked in place at the base of the stairs.

“If bodies are here long,” the woman goes on, unlocking the door and getting ready to push it open, “the spirits scream all night.”

Sera timidly walks over, joining the woman just in time for her to force the door open.

The rancid smell of rotting flesh pours out of the room ahead. It’s so putrid and thick that Sera reflexively covers her mouth and nose to keep her stomach from emptying.

She keeps her nose pinched as she tries to regain her breath. She follows the woman in to the room.

Tables are lined up against the wall to the right, almost every one occupied with a body draped in a sheet. Sera tries to steel herself, tries to gain composure over the spinning in her head. Her hand drops from her nose as she takes several shaky inhales.

The woman walks over to one of the bodies, and reaches toward the head.

Sera clutches her chest.

_This can’t be Jess._

The woman pinches the corners of the sheet.

_This can’t be Jess._

She just starts to tug at the cloth.

_Please, God, don’t be Jess._

A girl’s voice travels down through the ceiling from the floor above, what sounds like Sakura calling for her mother. The woman drops the sheet. “Sorry. Just second. You wait.”

Sera watches as the woman leaves the room and hurries back toward the stairs. She hugs herself with one of her arms and toys with the necklace around her neck nervously.

And then she hears a sigh.

She whips her head toward the sound in time to see one of the body’s chests fall- the body the woman was going to show her. Sera holds her breath and listens.

Nothing.

Slowly she approaches the table.

The shape under the sheet is the right size to be Jess, but she won’t know until she sees.

She has to see.

Her hand shakes as she reaches for the corner of the sheet. She winds her fingers into the fabric.

Quick, like a bandaid, she rips the sheet back.

She looks at the grey, bulging, veined body only long enough to be sure it’s not her twin, before running out of the room.

“Sera,” Aiden gasps when Sera bursts through the door at the top of the steps. “Are you-”

“It’s not her,” she says to him before moving toward the woman, who just finished helping a disgruntled man. “It’s not her.”

“No?” the woman says. “Good. Good news.”

“Is there someone who can help me search the forest?” Sera asks.

“You want to go out there?” Aiden asks.

“The forest is very dangerous,” the woman says wearily. “Do not leave the path. Can get lost.”

“I understand,” Sera says. “What if I want to hire a guide?”

“No guide come back. May be more bodies.”

Sera shakes her head. “No, she’s _lost._ She’s not dead…”

The woman stops Sera before she can get out the door. Her grip is firm on Sera’s wrist. “Do not leave the path,” she repeats seriously, slowly.

Sera stalls before pulling her arm free. She rushes through the door.

She’s barely outside when she runs straight into a girl. The girl looks just as horrified to see Sera as Sera was to see the body.

She shouts a long string of Japanese words, but the only one Sera recognizes is at the end. “… _Yūrei_!”

The girl draws a blade and takes a slash at her. Sera screams and leaps back, but not before the tip of the blade nicks her arm.

“Whoa, whoa!” Aiden shouts at the girl, barely catching Sera before she falls.

The girl was ready to swing again. “Naoko!” the woman shouts, making the girl halt her assault.

“I am not a Yūrei!” Sera shouts as she regains her balance. “Not a Yūrei!”

Naoko points the blade at Sera’s face, and Sera reflexively holds up her hands. Blood dribbles down her arm from the three inch cut. “I saw you go into the forest,” she says. “I saw the look in your eyes. The forest had you. Your hair- your eyes-”

“They were black, weren’t they?” Sera says quickly.

The woman angrily says something in Japanese from inside the door, but Aiden and Sera’s position block her from getting outside and talking to Naoko directly. Regardless, the girl ignores her.

“The woman you saw wasn’t me, she’s my twin.”

Naoko squints suspiciously.

Sera slowly reaches for the phone in her pocket, and the girl’s blade follows her hand. Once she has the phone out, she unlocks the screen and holds it out for the girl to see.

Naoko looks from the photo to Sera’s face multiple times before she takes a step back and relaxes her stance. “Twin, huh? I guess that’s why you’re here?”

“I have to find my sister.”

Naoko tisks and returns her blade to the sheathe on her hip. “Every person I’ve seen enter this forest, with the look on their face your sister had, ends up staying there. It’s hopeless, go home.”

“Naoko…” the woman chastises.

The girl rolls her eyes and pushes past the three of them to get inside.

Sera won’t give up that easily. She turns around and follows the girl into the shop. “You know the forest?”

“Sera- stop,” Aiden says and catches Sera’s shoulder to keep her from chasing the girl any further.

Naoko stops her approach to the stairs that lead up to the second floor. She turns on her heel and faces Sera. “I’ve lived here my whole life. I know the forest better than anyone.”

The woman angrily addresses Naoko with a long string of Japanese that Naoko barely reacts to.

“Anyone alive,” Naoko amends, pointing the words more at the woman than Sera. “I know it well enough to know that if your sister went back in there-” she points generally toward the side of the house that faces the forest while keeping her eyes locked with Sera’s, “she’s not coming back out.”

Sera takes a step forward, making Aiden’s hand fall from her shoulder. “She’s not dead. She’s just lost. I need a guide to help me find her.”

“You can’t be seriously asking her,” Aiden says.

Naoko chuckles and crosses her arms. She looks Sera up and down like she’s sizing her up.

“Naoko…” the woman says, drawing out her name in a warning.

“If I say no?” Naoko asks.

“Than I’ll find someone else.”

The girl chuckles again. “No one is stupid enough to walk you out there, holding your hand while you shout for your sister.”

“Than I’ll go alone.”

Naoko rolls her eyes. “Of course you will. Brave western girl, thinks she’s immune to the Yūrei.”

“Yūrei?” Sera says skeptically. “You mean ghosts?”

“Yūrei are different from ghosts,” Naoko says seriously in a cold tone that enough to make Sera’s heart skip. “The forest uses them to trick you. You know why she’s always on about ‘Do not leave the path’?” she asks and tosses a nod toward the woman, who stands timidly nearby.

Sera glances at her before returning her stare to Naoko.

“If you get lost, they will find you. They will make you see things… make you want to die. They won’t kill you, they’ll let you do it yourself. And you will.”

“What a load of crap,” Aiden says with an exasperated sigh. “Sera, your arm…”

Sera shakes her head and frowns. “Okay. Thanks for that,” she says sarcastically to Naoko. “Guess that’s a no, than?”

Naoko continues to glare at Sera while she mulls. “I can’t tell if you’re brave or stupid. Either way, if you go alone, you’re dead.”

“So come with me,” Sera pleads.

“Sera, come on,” Aiden tries to protest, putting his hand on her shoulder again.

Sera shrugs him off, her eyes not leaving Naoko with fierce determination. “I’m going to look for her. I have to. Alone or not.”

Naoko studies Sera’s eyes carefully before finally nodding. “Fine. I’ll take you.”

“Naoko!” the woman chastises, and they get into a small row in Japanese.

When the woman finally storms off deeper into the house, Naoko turns back to Aiden and Sera. “Come on, I need to speak with you.”

“Wait a damn minute,” Aiden demands. “Your arm is bleeding Sera!”

Sera hisses when Aiden lifts her arm up, as if he needs to show her the cut himself.

“I’ll dress your wound,” Naoko says with a hint of shame in her tone.

“She’s going to need stitches!” Aiden says.

“Stitches?” Sera gasps.

Naoko shakes her head. “It’s not _that_ bad, I barely grazed you.”

“You should be seen by a doctor,” Aiden insists.

“It’s, really not that bad,” Sera says. She has a feeling if she leaves to have it looked over by some hospital, she’s going to throw away Naoko’s offer.

“Not that bad?” Aiden gasps, like he can’t believe what he’s hearing.

“When will we be leaving?” Sera asks as she trails behind Naoko, who walks toward the stairs.

“Are you insane? She attacks you with a sword and you are seriously going to follow her into a forest?”

Sera shoots him a dangerous look.

“At least not tonight,” Aiden compromises. “It’s already getting dark.”

“Not tonight,” Naoko agrees. “Tomorrow, at the earliest. And that’s only _if_ this talk goes well, so come on.”

He catches Sera’s shoulder before she reaches the stairs, forcing her to stop. “Sera, no way. I do not like this.”

“What choice do we have?” she asks, impatiently listening to Naoko’s fading footsteps.

“Finding someone who doesn’t try to kill people with a knife!” Aiden harshly whispers.

“It’s just a scratch,” Sera insists.

Aiden lets out a long exasperated breath. “Fine, if attempted murder isn’t enough for you, she says she saw your sister going into the forest alone.”

“Yeah…”

“She may be one of the last people to see Jess alive,” Aiden says, hushed.

Sera looks up the stairs than back to Aiden. “Please, why would she hurt Jess?”

“She attacked you!” Aiden harshly reminds- his patience running thin. “With the huge ass knife on her hip!”

Sera shakes her head. “If you have any suicide mountain tour guides that grew up on the mountain and can defend themselves on speed dial, please, go ahead.”

“We could head back- ask around at the bar…”

“Are you coming or not?” Naoko asks from upstairs, out of sight.

“She’s here _now_. We walk away from this, we might not find another guide,” Sera reasons and begins to head up the stairs. “She’s the best chance we’ve got.”

“Fine, but I’m staying down here,” Aiden says firmly.

“Seriously?” Sera says, turning back to glare at him.

“Yes, seriously,” Naoko answers instead. “Hurry up.”

Sera looks to the top of the stairs and back- but Aiden’s no longer in view. She tisks and continues to the top of the narrow stairs.

She finds Naoko standing in one of the doorways down the hall, her eyebrows raised. “I need to ask you a few questions before I’ll take you out there.”

Sera agrees, thankful that Naoko didn’t care about Aiden’s absence. She follows Naoko inside the room.

Naoko cleans and dresses Sera’s arm professionally, as though she’s had a lot of experience. Once that’s done, they share some drinks.

Naoko demands to be told Sera’s life story. Sera regurgitates it all. If this is the price, she’s glad to pay it. Anything to get Jess back.

She speaks of how they were raised by their grandmother, that Jess would get in trouble time and time again- and each time Sera would know. She tells Naoko about their grandmother dying, Jess moving to Japan to start anew, Sera getting on with her life and regretting not coming sooner to help Jess when she felt something was wrong.

However, once she’s done, Naoko finally speaks up.

“You’re lying about something.”

Sera is taken back by this.

“You say you and Jess were raised by your grandmother, I believe that. You say you would know if she was hurt, because you share a mystical connection…”

“It’s not mystical,” Sera steps in, “it’s just when something happens to one of us the other one can tell. I mean, usually it’s something happening to her and me coming to bail her out, but… We’re twin sisters. If she were dead, I would just know.”

“I believe you.”

Sera relaxes a bit. The silence lingers, and she finds herself desperate to fill it- probably thanks to the alcohol. “When we were little, no one could tell us apart. It was like we were the same person.”

Naoko nods and takes a drink. “I believe what you say about your sister- that she’s struggling with her demons. Everyone is, to some degree.” She swirls the liquid left in her glass before she sets it down with a distinct _click-clank_. “Everything you’ve told me, I believe. So, perhaps lying isn’t the right term. You’re _hiding_ something.”

Sera’s jaw tightens as she holds Naoko’s gaze.

“Why did you live with your grandmother?”

Sera tries very hard to keep her face flat. The drinks aren’t helping at all, but she’s decently sure she’s managing. “It was a car accident when we were six. Our parents had gone to a movie, grandma was over and she was watching us.”

She could see it as clear as though she were there. Her and Jess, sitting on either side of their grandma on the old couch. She was using a View-Master, Jess was clutching her stuffed animal, Grandma was eating the stale popcorn.

“They were supposed to be back any minute, and we- we heard this crash outside.”

A loud, booming sound did ring out- but it wasn’t a crash. _Tick, clunk_. Another loud bang. The viewfinder fell out of her hands onto the floor. Both twins looked to their grandma’s face to find her staring at the door behind which the noise had come- the door to the basement.

“Grandma rushed outside. We followed her.”

The basement door wailed against the hinges as their grandma pushed it open.

“It was a drunk driver.”

Their grandma descended the stairs.

“He had been doing sixty in a residential neighborhood. Hit them right as they turned into the driveway.”

Jess followed their grandma, not but one step behind her.

“Jess was in front of me. She saw it first.”

Jess’s face peeked around the wall of the stairs into the basement. Her face was illuminated by the basement’s yellow light.

“Jess told me later that their bodies were right there, on the lawn.”

Jess had told her later, that their mom lay dead on the ground, face down, blood pooled around her head.

“I kept my eyes closed. But she saw it all.”

Their grandma had never been more panicked as she forced them back upstairs. She had never seen Jess’s face so contorted with fear.

Naoko is quiet for a long time before she asks, “Did he pay?”

Sera’s brows pinch. “Who?”

“The drunk driver?” Naoko says with slightly narrowed eyes.

“Oh,” Sera says and shakes her head. “No. No.”

Naoko still watches her with narrowed eyes, as though she can see through it all. “You understand why I am asking you all this?”

Sera takes a deep breath and wipes the corner of her mouth. “The Yūrei.”

“ _The Yūrei_ ,” Naoko says with much more seriousness than Sera. “If there’s any sadness in your heart, they will use it against you. They don’t care if you believe in them. They don’t care if you’re afraid of them. They’re not what matters. What’s inside you,” she says with a point to Sera’s chest. “What’s inside there,” she points to Sera’s head. “That’s what will kill you. So I wanted to know.”

“And now that you know,” Sera asks, “will you still take me to find my sister?”

After another several seconds of staring Sera down, Naoko snags her glass and empties it down her throat. The glass smacks the table again once she’s done. “We leave at first light. We have a spare room, use it so you won’t be late.”

“Thank you-”

“When we go out there,” Naoko says with a gravely serious tone, “you have to listen to every word I say. If I tell you to stay, you stay. If I say we need to return, we return. No exceptions. You understand?”

“Yes.”

“Swear you’ll listen to me, on your sister’s life?”

Sera swallows. “I swear.”

 


	5. Blind

It’s still dark when Sera wakes. Panic rises up from her chest as she tries furiously to remember where she is. As soon as she remembers Naoko, the cabin, and yesterday’s events, the panic ebbs- though the unease remains.

She doesn’t realize how dry her mouth is until she tries to yawn. The thought of water, or anything to drink really- is enough to make her drool… if her mouth was wet enough to.

Sera rises out of bed, slides her white sweater over her sleep shirt, snags the phone, and leaves the spare room.

The hall is even darker than the bedroom. After some tired finger fumbling, she manages to unlock Aiden’s phone and turn on it’s flashlight. She aims it down the hallway.

It could be the phone’s screen blinded her, or her flashlight is playing tricks, but she could swear that this hallway wasn’t so long earlier. She slowly heads down it. She steps lightly, keeps her flashlight aimed ahead and not into any of the doorways on her sides. She wants to avoid waking anyone, if possible. All she wants is something to drink.

She reaches the end of the hall, where the stairs should be. Instead of a staircase, however, there’s only a table with a mirror on it. Sera shines the light back down the hall, but it’s not bright enough to reach all the way down. She couldn’t have made a wrong turn, could she?

“Sera.”

Sera whirls around toward the dead end hall, from wince her name was called. She shines the flashlight in every corner, at the ceiling, at the floor- but there’s nothing. Nothing except the desk and mirror. She knows she just heard her name- it was clear as day.

Her flashlight beam ends up on the only thing on the flat surface of the desk. A little box, centered perfectly, sit open on it’s lid.

She approaches it slowly. It looks oddly familiar, and once she’s squared in front of it, she knows why. It’s the box her necklace came in, the necklace that Jess had shipped her. The contents prove it. At the bottom of the box lays the poem, though it’s folded in a different way so that more of the poem is showing.

Bubbling anger momentarily suppresses the concern of the mysterious voice as she wonders who would be in her belongings- why they would steal this- why they would leave it here. As she thinks, her eyes rest on the poem, and eventually she reads the words.

 

_The monsters come_

_And leave us numb._

_We’re broken, bleeding, and blind._

 

_A long hard look_

_To every nook_

_And cranny of our mind-_

 

_Just might reveal…_

 

The rest is hidden by the fold.

“Sera.”

She nearly jumps out of her skin. She aims the flashlight at the source of the voice- the mirror. When the light does nothing but blind her, she lowers it’s beam back to the box. The light reflecting up from the desk is enough to reveal her own reflection, and nothing more. It takes her a moment, however, to realize that the reflect isn’t wearing the same facial expression as her own.

The reflection speaks.

“ _You should have stayed away_.”

 

Her entire body jolts when she wakes. This time the window glows slightly with the early morning sky. The sun’s not yet high enough to give real light, but still casts enough light to illuminate the room in grey.

Aiden and her lay tangled in the twin bed. He didn’t notice her wake, if she really is awake this time.

The quiet sound of Aiden breathing is broken by three sharp knocks. Sera’s wide eyes fall in the door. For a moment, there’s nothing but ringing silence. Sera starts to wonder if the knocks were real, if any of it is real- or if she’s still having a nightmare.

“Get up, we’re leaving in twenty minutes,” Naoko says with more knocks.

“I’m up, coming,” Sera says blearily.

She hears Naoko’s steps disappear down the hall.

“Aiden, wake up,” Sera says and untangles herself from him. He groans as she leaves his side. “Get up, the more time we waste the less time we can look for Jess.”

She rushes to get dressed and collect what few things she unpacked from her luggage. She only time she wastes is the time she takes to look for the necklace’s box. She finds it near the bottom of her bag, empty other than the poem- thanks to her never taking the necklace off.

Not everything is right, however. The lid is open and the base nestled into it, just like it was in the dream. She wouldn’t have packed it into her bag in this way. She looks at the poem, still folded and pressed into the bottom of the box- but the wrong part of the poem is showing. It’s folded differently yet again.

 

_A long hard look_

_To every nook_

_And cranny of our mind-_

 

_Just might reveal_

_What we can’t heal…_

 

She closes the lid and shoves the box back into her bag.

 

The official path through the forest is a short hike from the cabin. When they arrive, the sun has barely started to breech the horizon. A large sign stands near the beginning of the dirt path, covered in Japanese that Sera nor Aiden can read.

They’re not alone. A few cars are parked here, a small group of people standing around them- strapping on packs and eating. Aiden says it wouldn’t be a bad idea to tell them to keep an eye out for Jess. Sera agrees. The more people on the look out, the better. Naoko impatiently agrees to translate for them.

Keeping up with Naoko after that practically takes jogging. It seems that stopping to explain took more time than Naoko was willing to waste.

“Hey, could you slow down some?” Aiden calls ahead to Naoko.

“Keep up,” Naoko calls back. “We’re wasting daylight.”

Aiden snorts. “I still think this was a bad idea,” he mutters under his breath.

Sera sighs. “She knows what she’s doing,” she quietly replies.

“Yeah, I’m sure she knows exactly where she’s going to bury us, too.”

“Seriously, you’re afraid of a young girl? You think she could take both of us alone?” Sera asks.

“A young girl _with a big knife_ , who knows this forest like the back of her hand thanks to _growing up here_. Did you know there’s ice caves in this mountain? Most of it hasn’t even been explored. We could easily be killed out here and hidden where we’d never be found again.”

“You know, Aiden, that’s really not helping considering we’re here to find my missing sister,” Sera snaps.

“What are you muttering about back there?” Naoko calls, looking back at them now.

“Just reading the brochure,” Sera lies. “There’s ice caves under this forest?”

Naoko waits for them to reach two paces behind herself before she continues up the path. With her back turned toward them, she says, “Follow right behind me unless you want to fall into one. We’re fine on the path, for now.”

“ _For now_ ,” Aiden mutters under his breath.

“The tunnels run all through the mountain, like a maze. Some believe they are gateways to the other side.”

They walk for another half hour at least before the path forks. On the left is the well traveled path, on the right is a roped off path mostly overgrown and covered in fallen leaves. It’s almost unrecognizable- other than the rope barring off it’s entrance.

A hissing sound makes Sera stop and turn around. Naoko nor Aiden seemed to have heard it. It could have been the leaves… but it sounded similar to her name.

Naoko and Aiden are fifteen steps down the path before Sera decides to catch up. She steps over the rope, ignoring the signs hanging off it that, despite being in Japanese, clearly signal to stay out. As soon as her feet plant on the other side, the air changes. Just one step past this rope, and Sera can sense it. This is not a walk in a nature park. There’s something off, something strange about the wind pushing through the trees, the shadows on the forest floor, the vastness of nature around them.

Sera’s pulled out of her thoughts by a bright flash of light. She blinks several times as she looks for the source, to find Aiden aiming his camera at her. He chuckles, “Sorry, left the flash on.”

Naoko’s off again when Sera’s just barely reached them.

“Honestly?” Sera grinds.

“What?”

“This isn’t the time or place for pictures,” she chastises. “Honestly, one minute you’re talking about getting murdered then the next you’re treating this like a vacation.”

“I’m just trying to make the best of it, alright? Hey, are you alright? Kind of looked like you drifted off there.”

Sera just nods as they catch back up to Naoko.

“While you were zoned off, Naoko was explaining that compasses don’t work,” Aiden says and holds out his own compass for Sera to see.

She takes it into her hand and watches the needle spin in a dizzy circle. “Okay, that’s weird,” Sera says. “Why is that happening?”

Naoko glances back at the compass in Sera’s hand. “Iron deposits in the mountain,” Naoko says.

Suddenly Naoko stops, making Aiden and Sera stop as well. Sera looks around for the cause of Naoko’s stall- but she doesn’t see anything.

“Listen,” Naoko says, turning toward them again. “People see things in this forest.”

“The Yūrei thing again,” Aiden asks, almost jovially.

Sera glares at him before returning her gaze to Naoko.

“Remember what I said. It’s not about the Yūrei- it’s never about them. If you see anything bad, anything strange… it’s not real. It’s here,” she says, and taps two fingers to her temple, “in your head.”

With that, she faces forward again and continues to march into the trees. Aiden and Sera share a glance. He raises his eyebrows and smiles playfully. Teasingly, he taps two fingers to his temple before continuing to follow Naoko. Sera rolls her eyes, but doesn’t bother chastising him anymore.

The trees are thick. Their trunks aren’t particularly wide, but they are many- and they reach insanely high. The branches fan and tangle- blocking out much of the midmorning sunlight. The birds and bugs sing all around them, filling the air and leaving no room for silence. The farther they walk, the less their path looks like a path. Sera’s thankful to be following Naoko- without her she knows she’d already be lost.

They fan out a bit when they reach a clearing with less trees. The ground is still overgrown and uneven, littered with vines, logs covered in mushrooms, toppled tree trunks, and moss that carpets nearly everything.

Sera can’t even blame Aiden for wanting to take pictures of the scenery. The nature in this forest is truly beautiful, if in an eerie kind of way.

She stops walking and listens to the sounds. Water running, bugs ringing, a strange hooting from a bird she’s sure she’s never heard before. The sounds seem to echo and harmonize, creating a dark sort of song.

“This way,” Naoko says.

Sera steps forward again, following after her and Aiden.

The plant life only gets bigger the deeper they push into the forest. Sera starts to muse that the farther they go, the more they shrink. Compared to the plants as tall as her and the trees impossibly high over head, she begins to feel like an ant. Much like an ant’s path, the path that Naoko follows seems to be invisible. There’s nothing trail-like about the path they’re taking- at least not to Sera. It all looks the same- to big- to full- to much.

Naoko slows considerably. She pushes branches out of the way as she focuses on something not to far away.

Sera steps up behind her and tries to see for herself what has caught their guides attention. A dome of blue canvas catches her eye, but in the sea of green, she doesn’t immediately recognize what it is.

“If you bring a tent,” Naoko says, “you’re not sure. Stay right here, you understand?”

Sera closes her jaw and nods.

Naoko pushes through the brush to reach the tent, calling out a greeting in Japanese to its occupant. Naoko sounds considerably more friendly than she has been since they’ve known her.

“What will you do if we don’t find your sister today?” Aiden asks from behind her.

“Try again tomorrow,” Sera says, still watching Naoko talk to the camper.

“What if we don’t find her tomorrow?”

Offended, Sera turns around with a scowl.

“I’m just… saying…” Aiden tries to proceed cautiously, “You know she’s tried this,” he nods toward the camper, “twice before.”

“It was a dark time for her when she took those pills in Florida,” Sera says tightly. “The first time was back in college- knowing Jess she probably just thought it was romantic, following in the footsteps of her favorite poet.”

“You say that so easily, like suicide is nothing worse than experimenting with drugs. Trying to kill yourself isn’t as trivial as trying weed, Sera. College or not, dark times or not… Jess has a history. I think you need to start preparing yourself for the worst.”

Sera tightens her jaw and turns back toward Naoko.

 

_Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,_

_If mankind perished utterly;_

 

_And spring herself, when she woke at dawn,_

_would scarcely know that we were gone._

 

There Will Come Soft Rains by Sara Teasdale, one of the many of Jess’s favorite, darker themed poems. Jess has always been drawn to darkness, since…

Since…

Sera can almost hear the bang.

She can almost feel the view-finder fall from her hands.

She can almost see Jess’s look of horror.

Sera doesn’t say another word to Aiden, and Aiden preoccupies himself with taking more photographs until Naoko rejoins them.

“Is he going to be alright?” Aiden asks.

Naoko looks back toward the camper. “He’s going to be okay. I think. We’re okay to continue on.”

They walk until the sun is high above their heads, barely peeking through the canopy. Sera hasn’t seen a sign of life since the camper, until they come across green ribbon with one end tied to a nearby tree, the other end disappearing far into the brush.

“What’s that?” Sera asks.

Naoko catches sight of what Sera points at.

“People use tape or rope like this if they think they might want to find their way back out,” Naoko answers.

“Breadcrumbs,” Aiden remarks.

“Or, they hope somebody will follow the rope to remove their body from the forest one day.” Naoko walks off as she says this, her eyes fixed on a tree nearby. “This one looks recent.”

Sera and Aiden join her at the tree tied with a yellow cord. Naoko starts to follow the cord where it leads into the trees.

“Whoa, no, no freaking way.”

Sera turns back to Aiden with an exasperated look.

“You heard what she just said- there could be a dead body on the other end of this cord,” Aiden argues.

“It’s worth checking, it could be Jess’s.”

“Yeah, and we both could be right,” Aiden says and crosses his arms.

“A lot of people come to this forest. There’s no guarantee this is or isn’t your sisters,” Naoko says.

Guarantee or not, this is the best shot they’ve had in hours at finding Jess.

The cord reaches far from the path they were on, occasionally wound around a branch at hip height to keep it visible. Eventually, they come to the end- tied off to a sapling.

“Doesn’t look like anyone’s here. Maybe they changed their mind,” Naoko says.

Sera looks around. She spots a blue cord in the distance, but it’s clear it’s not connected to the one they followed. Other than that, there’s nothing abnormal about their surroundings. Sera happens to glance up, and screams at what she sees.

Naoko is on her side in a second, blade drawn and ready to fight. When her eyes fall on what Sera had seen, however, her stance slumps.

A body hangs from a noose in the tree, the face shrouded in shadow.

Sera pants and gasps as she takes several steps away, fighting hard against her panicked gag reflex. She refuses to look back at the body.

“I have to cut him down before we can continue,” Naoko says, her tone somber and soft. “I’ll make a note of where he is.”

“Why?” Aiden asks.

“So the rangers can retrieve the body.”

Sera covers her mouth and shakes her head. She steps away and leans against a tree, keeping her back to Naoko and Aiden. Screwing her eyes shut isn’t even enough. She hears Naoko’s blade cut through the rope, and Aiden’s steps as he guides the body to the ground as gently as possible. The thuds it makes is almost to sickening to bare.

She hears a distant scream. Sera’s eyes rip open. She looks in the direction of the scream, but the trees are so thick she’s lucky to see ten yards ahead. The scream came from farther than that, deeper than that.

Aiden and Naoko don’t seem to react to it, however. Sera tries to take several, deep breaths. It was probably a bird’s call, or some other animal that she’s not familiar with. She’s worked up is all- or at least that’s what she tries to convince herself of.


	6. A Long Hard Look

They must walk for two hours, taking breaks on and off again. They’re so far in, it’s starting to feel like there isn’t a world outside of the forest. It’s easy to get lost in the feeling that the whole world is swallowed in these trees and the shadow that the branches cast.

Naoko and Aiden walk ahead of Sera. They don’t notice when she suddenly stops. A strange feeling overcomes her, like something is telling her not to take another step. A breeze pushes through the trees, kicking leaves on the path over Sera’s hiking shoes. The moving air feels like a breath from the forest itself, like in some way, it’s trying to speak to her.

Sera looks in the direction the wind is blowing to. A path that she could have easily missed stretches to the left. “Can we go this way?”

Naoko and Aiden stop and turn back to look at her.

“I mean, if we’re just picking a direction,” Sera says in response to their inquisitive looks. Before they say yes or no, Sera starts to step down the path herself. After three or so steps, she hears Naoko and Aiden following after her.

It seems to take the sun much less time to descend than to rise. The forest becomes darker with every step, the shadows steadily grow colder, the bird grow quieter.

“Jess!” Sera calls. She’s answered only by the sound of her own echoing voice. It seems to be the loudest sound in this forest, barreling miles all around through the trees and brush. “Jess!”

“We need to turn back soon,” Naoko says without turning to face Sera.

“What, already?” Sera asks.

“It’s going to take several hours to get back to the trail. We are not going to stay in the forest after dark. It’s easy enough to get lost in the day. At night? You’re blind, and the temperature drops… quickly…”

The last of Naoko’s words sound distracted. Once Sera looks up at her, she sees Naoko’s focus is on something deeper into the brush.

“You see something?” Sera asks as she steps up beside Naoko. Her eyes follow Naoko’s gaze. It takes her a second to catch it, buried behind trees and tall green plants, but when she spots it all of the the air leaves her lungs. A bright yellow tent- one she knows all to well. “Oh my god, that’s Jess’s tent! Jess!”

Sera brakes into a sprint, Naoko and Aiden right on her tail. “Jess! I knew it. Jess!”

They reach the tent to find it open. Sera nearly throws herself inside the open flap. “It’s her,” Sera says surely as she looks at the sleeping bag, clothes, and poem books. “It is, it’s her! Oh my god, she’s close! She’s so close!” Sera scans the trees again, calling out Jess’s name.

Aiden joins in on calling out for Jess- both of their booming voices echoing through the trees.

Naoko lets them shout for several minutes as she squats near the ground. She eventually stands up, however, and says, “Since she’s not here, we’ll come back tomorrow.”

“No, we’ve got to stay,” Sera says, still smiling with the relief.

“Leave a note for her. We’ve got to go, now,” Naoko says forcefully.

The fact Naoko isn’t as ecstatic as Sera is confuses her, but does little to ebb her happiness. “Leave a note? Are you crazy? I’m staying! I’m staying until she comes back.”

Aiden sighs. “No, she’s right,” he says, walking to stand beside Naoko. “It’s not a good idea to stay here overnight.”

“We can return tomorrow,” Naoko says.

“Tomorrow? No, tomorrow’s going to be too late. She- she left the tent, she’s going to come back to sleep, her clothes are hanging on the line!” Sera says, laughing almost hysterically with giddiness.

“Sleeping here isn’t a good idea,” Naoko says, taking a few cautious steps forward. Her voice is softer, similar to the tone she used with the camper they came across before. “We will not stop looking for Jess, but we have to do so in the day time. Now? We must go. Sera, we have to stay safe.”

Sera nods. She takes a deep breath in, and lets it out. “I understand. You can head back,” she says and gestures to both Aiden and Naoko. “Go, it’s alright. I understand, you go.”

“What, and leave you here alone?” Aiden asks incredulously.

“You cannot stay,” Naoko pleads. It’s the first time Sera’s heard desperation in Naoko’s voice. “You swore to me you’d listen.”

“I came six thousand miles to find my sister,” Sera says forcefully. “She’s here, in these woods. I’m not leaving without her.” She pauses, takes a breath, and changes her tone to be softer. “Thanks for your help. I’m so grateful. Really. But I’m staying.”

Naoko looks a bit angry, a bit remorseful, but mostly disappointed. “At night, the forest draws out your fear, your sadness. I hope you’re prepared to face that.”

Sera takes a seat at the opening of the tent.

With a nod, Naoko turns and starts to head back the way they came.

“Naoko, wait,” Aiden calls after her.

“I’ll come back tomorrow at noon. Do not move from here, or I won’t be able to find you,” Naoko calls back, and in mere seconds disappears from view.

“Sera, you’re making a big mistake,” Aiden warns.

She gives him an exaggerated shrug. “I’m not leaving without her. Go with Naoko, make sure she comes back for us tomorrow. Hurry, before she’s to far gone,” she says sincerely.

Aiden looks toward the path, considering it, before he slips his pack off and drops it to the ground.

“You don’t have to do this. It’s my sister, not yours.”

“Yeah, and what kind of boyfriend would I be, huh? Besides, if it was my brother, I’d want to stick around too.”

She smiles at him gratefully. “Thanks.”

 

Night falls faster than Sera could have imagined it could. Soon, the sun and the warmth the sun brings disappear from the forest. The birds that once pervaded the atmosphere seem to have vanished completely, leaving only the ringing sound of insects and silence.

She just gets the tent settled and zipped up when Aiden returns with an armful of firewood. She tosses the hood of her jacket over her head to for warmth before striding over to him. A smirk plays on her lips as she says, “I’ve changed my mind. Let’s come back in the morning.”

He dryly laughs at her, though he grins as well. “Very funny. Help me with this fire.”

With some mild but playful bickering, they manage to get a tipi of sticks built up and lit.

Aiden unzips his pack as they settle around the pile of sticks. He digs something out and hands it over to Sera.

“What is this?” she asks as she looks at the blue wrapper covered in Japanese text.

“It’s a power bar,” Aiden answers. “Japanese version. Grabbed them from the hotel. They’re pretty good.”

Sera opens the wrapper and takes a bite. “Not bad,” she agrees.

The fire is fully blazing in moments, thanks to Aiden’s tentative care. “Take the tent when you get tired,” he says. “I’ll take first watch.”

It doesn’t take long for night to blanket everything in darkness. It’s not so much tiredness that drives Sera to the tent as it is the cold. The sleeping bag isn’t enough to fight off the chill, but it’s certainly better than nothing. She watches the embers drifting up into the darkness from the fire, the glow on Aiden’s face.

The scream, the same as the one she heard before, rings out- drowning the hum of the bugs as it crashes over them.

“What was that?” Sera asks, sure that Aiden heard it this time judging by the way he looked over his shoulder.

“I don’t know…” Aiden replies. “It sounded far off, though.”

Sera draws the sleeping bag tighter over her shoulders.

After several silent minutes, Aiden says, “Jess must be lost.”

“She’s close,” Sera says surely, quietly. “And alive.”

“Explain that to me, that connection you’ve told me about before,” Aiden requests. The sound of disbelieving and exasperation isn’t present in his voice as it normally is, enticing Sera to answer.

“It’s like a sound,” Sera says. “To low to hear… but I can just, feel it, running through me. That night, when Jess almost died… That sound dropped away. Where Jess had been, there was just… silence.”

Aiden stays quiet, poking the fire with a long stick to keep it stoked. “Remember how I told you Steven used to start fights all the time?”

“And that you stuck up for him,” Sera says.

“Yeah… well, at first I wouldn’t step in. I figured he needed to learn not to start them in the first place.” Aiden’s eyes don’t leave the fire. “One day he got beat up so bad that it left him deaf in his left ear. I remember seeing him- feeling, just, guilt. From then on, I always came running when he was in trouble. If he wouldn’t have gone into the service, I’m sure I’d still be chasing after him, picking up his messes.”

Sera’s surprised that Aiden is opening up about his brother. When it comes to their siblings and their pasts, they usually leave well enough alone. It must be the dark, the quiet, the forest bringing it all up now.

“I feel guilty too,” Sera says quietly.

Aiden’s eyes leave the fire and lock onto Sera’s. “What do you mean?”

“My parent’s bodies. I closed my eyes, but she looked. That’s always been the difference between us. She looks at the dark stuff, and I turn away. What she saw, she carried that all by herself. I should have shared it with her.” Her voice breaks. She has to take a deep breath to collect herself. “That’s why I come running.”

Aiden slowly nods, going back to staring at the fire and poking it with his stick.

“I’m going to try to get some sleep,” she says, sitting up to zip the tent closed. “Wake me up when you’re ready to switch.”

“Night,” he says, and disappears from behind the closing tent flap.

Using the flashlight on her phone, she finds Jess’s medicine bag. She riffles through it. There’s a few pill bottles, mostly vitamins. Standard toiletries, first aid, and, of course, a book of Sara Teasdale’s poetry titled Flame and Shadow. Sera smiles at the familiar object, and slips it out of the bag. She sits crosslegged with the book in her lap. She runs her hand over the well-worn cover before gently coaxing it open. On the empty page at the front of the book scrawls Sera’s handwriting: “ _Happy 16th Lady Jess! Love you Forever. Sera x_ ”

She runs her fingers over the handwriting. She’s about to turn the page when an unsettling feeling overcomes her, like she’s being watched. She looks over her shoulder to the yellow canvas of the tent, but obviously sees nothing. Sera could swear someone’s eyes were boring into her, but the only person outside is Aiden.

Unable to shake the feeling, Sera turns off the flashlight and settles down into the sleeping bag again.

Aiden, his face half in shadow, glares unblinkingly at the tent even after the light goes out.


	7. Every Nook

The sound of crunching leaves wakes Sera up again. It’s still night, though her tent is lit slightly by the glow of the fire outside. The noise that woke her sounded like footsteps- but now that she’s awake, there’s nothing but singing bugs outside. She sits up slightly and listens for evidence that what she heard was real.

A thunk and a slide against the ground have Sera sitting bolt upright.

“Aiden,” Sera says more than asks. “Aiden, say something.”

Silence, followed by quick steps racing halfway around the tent. Sera follows the noise, ending up on her back again to face the last place she heard the steps.

_Thunk thunk thunk thunk-_

The footsteps now run right up behind her, stopping at the entrance of the tent. Sera scrambles up and away, nearly pressed against the opposite side of the tent. Breathing hard, she stairs at the shadowed yellow canvas.

Fingers scratch at the canvas right behind her, groping her head. She shouts and flings herself away from the tent’s wall. She moves to the center of the tent and covers her mouth with her hand to keep her breathing from being so painfully loud. She listens for more steps, keeping herself completely silent so she can hear.

Silence. Then a distant scream.

She has to be able to see. Being in this tent feels like a trap, a noose all around her. She moves to the tent’s door and slowly unzips the flap. She curls just enough back to be able to peek through.

A long, oval, ornate mirror blocks her view of the fire. The glow of the flame behind it makes the mirror itself look like a black hole, as though the darkness covering its surface is all-consuming. The only part of its reflection that isn’t pitch black is the yellow tent that Sera peeks out of.

She unzips the flap the rest of the way, and peeks her head completely out. She looks around for the creator of the footsteps, but finds no one around. Aiden’s nowhere to be seen, either. Only the out-of-place mirror seems to be her company. She looks at it’s reflection, but is confused by what she sees.

Sera steps out of the tent to look at the mirror closer, but is still baffled by the image reflected. She sees herself standing in front of the tent, but in the mirror, her back is turned. She can see her messy light blond hair, the hood of her sweater, the back pockets of her jeans. To the mirror, she’s facing the tent. In reality, she’s facing the mirror.

She takes a step closer to the freestanding mirror, only to watch herself in the reflection take a step backwards. She walks up to the flawless glass to come face to face with her own back. Sera reaches out to touch the glass, watching her own arm lift up with the movement- but away from the glass.

Before her fingers touch the surface, a voice says her name behind her. She spins around and comes face to face with her own face.

“ _You should have stayed._ ”

Everything goes silent as she stares into her own eyes. Then a bloodcurdling scream feels the air. The mirror behind her explodes, sending shards everywhere. One piece grazes her cheek.

 

Sera wakes with a start in the tent. It’s dark, but alight enough to see thanks to the glow of the fire.

She waits several moments, listening. Everything seems normal, however. She unzips the tent’s door and steps out of it. A quick look around shows her that everything is as she left it when she went to sleep. There isn’t a mirror by the fire, nor shattered glass on the ground. It was just a dream. Aiden fell asleep beside the fire, wrapped in one of Jess’s blankets.

She reaches up to rub the sleep off her face, but winces when her cheek burns. She holds her hand out in front of her in the fire’s light and sees blood smeared on her fingers. Another touch to her face confirms that there’s a cut across her cheekbone.

Before she can wake up Aiden and tell him- a breaking branch behind her makes her turn toward the trees. The sound is followed by several footsteps, just out of sight. Sera moves toward the trees, hoping that getting closer will allow her to see what’s making the noise.

The far of scream sounds again- but she ignores it in favor of listening to the steps that still avoid her sight. “Hello?” she asks, moving a bit deeper into the tree line. “Jess, is that you?” she adds in a whisper.

She stands still for several seconds, but hears nothing in response. She pulls the phone from her pocket and turns on the flashlight feature, using it pierce the shadow.

Though the light’s bright, it only barely reaches through the darkness of the forest. She steps deeper, waving the light back and forth trying to see anything.

The light falls on the back of a girl who takes off running.

“Hey, wait!” Sera class and breaks into a run to chase after her. The flashlight only lights up the tree branches when they’re a few feet away, making Sera have to dodge and duck with several near misses. “Wait!” she calls again to the running girl who’s out of her sight, though she can still hear the girl’s footsteps. “Please!”

At first she thinks it’s her ears playing tricks on her, but she starts to hear singing. Echoed, distant, child-like singing. When she doesn’t hear the girl’s footsteps anymore, she halts. She turns in a circle, breathing fast, aiming her light outwards- trying to see anything around her. The singing is distinct now- though it still sounds like it’s coming from the opposite end of a long tunnel.

Her light lands on the face of a Japanese girl. Sera startles so hard she nearly drops her phone.

The girl looks fearful. She has dirt smeared across her face and uniform, as though she’s been out here for days.

A feeling prickles at the back of Sera’s mind, as though she’s seen this girl before. Sera catches her breath and, as calmly as she can, says, “Hi. Do you speak English?”

The girl timidly steps closer. She holds up her fingers with a small gap between her finger and thumb. “Little,” she says.

Sera nods. “Okay.”

The girl points to herself. “Hoshiko.”

“Hoshiko,” Sera repeats, stepping closer to the girl. “Are you alone?”

The girl doesn’t say anything. Only shivers.

“You’re cold, let me help you…”

“You Sera?”

Sera stops halfway through taking off her jacket. “Yeah. How do you know my name?” she presses.

Hoshiko looks to the ground with something like shame. She looks back up. “No trust him,” Hoshiko whispers slowly, her voice quivering.

“Who?” Sera whispers back.

“Miss Jess spoke of him,” Hoshiko says.

“Jess,” Sera gasps, “is Jess you’re teacher?”

Hoshiko shakes her head. “I find her here… She said need your help.”

“Where is she?” Sera asks.

“No trust him,” Hoshiko whispers again.

Before Sera can ask anything more, a man’s shouting- Aiden’s by the sound if it- scares Hoshiko back into running.

“No, no no! Wait! Please!” Sera runs after her again, but after only a dozen or so strides- she her foot falls through air rather than touching the ground. She screams as she tumbles down into a small but steep hill, hitting the ground hard at the bottom.

Sera pushes herself up off the ground, grunting when a pain shoots up her left arm. The bandages around Naoko’s cut soak red. The cut reopened, and by the feel of it, tore even more.

“Sera? Sera!” Aiden yells when he finds her sitting on the ground. He runs up to her and shines his flashlight on her.

“I lost her, I lost her…” Sera mutters.

“Jesus, Sera. Who? Who’d you lose? Jess?”

Sera shakes her head and continues to look around the trees. “No, it was a… it was a teenage girl. She said- she said…”

“She said what?” Aiden demands.

“Something in Japanese,” Sera dismisses and clutches her arm. “Oh, man…”

“Well we’re not going to find her if she doesn’t want to be found,” Aiden says. “We’ll tell Naoko about her when she comes tomorrow. Now, lets get back before we get turned around.”

 

Sera sits at the fire, watching it slowly die as the sun slowly rises. Even with it’s light, however, the forest is still cast in the trees’ shadows and swallowed by a thick grey fog. It’s quieter than the previous morning- with barely any birds or bugs. The loudest sound all around is the fire cracking, until Aiden stirs from the tent.

He starts to pack up their packs.

“What are you doing?” Sera asks him after a minute.

“There’s enough light for us now. Let’s get you out of here.”

“But Naoko said noon.”

“Seven hours from now? No, look at your arm. You need stitches. And the cut on your face needs cleaned, properly.”

“Let me worry about myself,” Sera insists. “Jess might still come back.”

Aiden stares at her for a moment, before setting down his pack and walking over to her. He kneels in front of her. “Sera. You just saw a child out in the woods, presumably contemplating suicide, considering that she ran from you. We tell them that, they’ll send a search party quick. Maybe that search party finds your sister. Make sense?”

The thought of having an entire team searching the woods does make Sera feel excited- but she doesn’t want to leave the campsite. She also can’t help but feel that Aiden wants to leave for some other reason.

“In the mean time,” he says and yanks the jacket Sera was partially sitting on out from under her, “in case your sister does come back while we’re gone, you do what you should have done yesterday. Leave a note.”

She doesn’t want to, but she ends up leaving with Aiden anyway. Although she was full of hope that Jess would return to the tent yesterday, her hope has wained considerably by morning. The last thing she wants is for Aiden to try and find his way back alone, and she’s lost both him and Jess.

“This is the way we came,” Aiden says surely as they crunch their way over the underbrush. “We keep walking in this direction, we’ll come to the path before to long.”

Sera follows behind him unsurely. The fog makes everything look different. The plants aren’t as green, the shadows cast by the trees are darker, the sounds their feet make as they walk are louder. Nothing about it feels right, but she still tries to trust him.

After an hour, the sun has risen enough to dispel the fog. A rumbling sound has been growing nearer and nearer the farther they walk, and once they’re upon it, Sera sees the source.

“We didn’t cross a river coming in,” she says.

“Yeah, I know,” Aiden says without looking back at her. “At least we can follow it down. It may take a little longer, but it will lead us back to civilization just the same.”

Sera steps over to the edge of the cliff. The river flows to her left twenty feet below. The water is clear, other than a small stretch of rapids that create white waves.

The white, bubbling water is broken up by a black shape flowing down the center of the river. It takes a moment for Sera to recognize that it’s a body.

Aiden is walking off to the right when he looks back and sees how close Sera is to the edge. “Sera, hey, Sera, careful. Get back from there,” he says and races back to her. He tries to pull her back a few steps, but she doesn’t let him.

“Do you see that?” she asks.

Aiden looks down the river and sees the body as well. “Jesus…” he mutters, then looks up to Sera. “Come on, away from there,” he ushers and tugs her hand until she’s a few steps back from the edge. He continues to lead the way to the right.

“What are you doing?” Sera asks.

Aiden looks back briefly. “What do you mean?”

“We were walking that way,” she says.

“No we weren’t,” Aiden argues.

“Yes, we were,” Sera says surely. “Two minutes ago, we were walking that way, and now you’re leading me back the way we came.”

“No, Sera, we’re following the river down. Remember? We’re not _climbing_ the mountain.”

Sera looks down to the river, to see it flowing left to right now. She stares at the running river, sure that only seconds ago she saw it running the other direction.

“Down. Water flows down,” he reiterates.

Sera shifts her eyes to Aiden suspiciously.

“See?” he asks, and matches her gaze. He stares at her for several seconds. The look in his eyes feels foreign, like she’s looking at a stranger. Finally he turns away and continues to head to the right.

Sparing one last, confused glance at the river, she follows after him. She stops just short of catching up to him, however, when carving on a tree catches her eye.

Scrawled in hasty looking text reads, “THE DEMONS WE SEE AMONGST THE TREES”, right above a knot hole.

The words sound familiar, like she’s heard them before. Or read them. She swings her back around to her front and unzips the main pocket. After some digging, she finds the box that Jess’s necklace came in. She pulls the folded up paper out of the bottom and reads the poem inside.

 

_The monsters come_

_And leave us numb._

_We’re broken, bleeding, and blind._

 

_A long hard look_

_To every nook_

_And cranny of our mind-_

 

_Just might reveal_

_What we can’t heal_

_Or simply leave behind._

 

_The demons we see_

_Amongst the trees,_

_Pain and suffering refined-_

 

She stops there. She knew she recognized it. It’s a line from the poem.

She hastily folds the paper back up and shoves it back into the bag as she steps over to the tree. The knot hole is just high enough to be out of her sight, but is still in reach. She stretches her arm up, and gingerly sticks her hand inside the hole. Her fingers feel around and brush up against something smooth. At first she thinks she’s feeling eggs, until she feels how misshapen they are. She pulls out a handful, and opens her fist to see.

Black stones, all of which have a hole running straight through them, fill her hand. Sera’s free hand reaches up to the necklace Jess gave her. An identical stone hangs from a black cord around her neck.

“Sera! Are you coming?” Aiden calls.

His voice is uncharacteristically loud and mean, and she was so lost in thought when he shouted, that she drops all of the stones in her fright. Her eyes barely land on him before he’s turning around and continuing to trek forward.

Sera looks down at the stones at her feet briefly before following after him.


	8. Our Mind

The bad feeling Sera had only gets worse the farther they walk. She has an overbearing feeling that they’re going the wrong way- not just that they’re heading away from the path, but that they’re heading toward something dangerous. Every step becomes harder to take.

The sun doesn’t seem to move out of the same spot in the sky no matter how long or far they walk. The more Sera thinks about how long it’s taking, how long it could take to get out- the longer it seems to take. She slips Aiden’s phone out of her pocket to distract herself.

She knows that there isn’t a signal thanks to the mountain’s metal, but her goal isn’t to call anyone. She plans on sifting through the offline apps to find anything that will pass the time. But then she notices the phone app has a notification.

Her heart skips. Could it be Jess calling her back?

She opens the app and, to her dismay, the call came from Aiden’s coworker Erik. The voice-mail he left was downloaded the night before last, before they were in the forest at all. More to get rid of the annoying red dot than anything, she opens it. She types in Aiden’s password, and holds up the phone to listen.

“ _The following message will be deleted in, two, days:_ Hey, Aiden, it’s me Erik. Some family stuff that came up so I won’t be able to cover you for the last couple of days of your trip. Sam said he’d step in, though, so you don’t have to head back early. Just thought I’d keep you informed. You’re one lucky son of a bitch, by the way. I don’t mean to sound bitter. I’d kill for one Japan vacation- but two? In a row? You must really be buttering up that girlfriend of yours. Anyway, I’ll talk to you soon. Let me know when you’re headed back. Later.”

Sera stops walking. She lowers the phone and stares, wide-eyed, at the back of Aiden’s head.

The call Sera answered from Aiden’s boss rushes back to her mind. She had forgotten all about it, with everything happening so fast. He honestly used a week of vacation days without telling her? The only time Aiden left for an extended time was for the business trip to Oregon a couple of weeks ago- or so she thought.

She feels her stomach fall. If she thinks about it, Jess disappeared around the same time that Aiden left for that trip.

Sera picks up her pace and catches up to Aiden again. “Hey, Aiden?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I see your camera?”

Aiden stops walking and turns to face Sera, suspicion in his eyes. “What happened to, ‘This isn’t the time or place’?”

“I just need something to pass the time,” she says as casually as she can.

He eyes her for a moment more before shrugging off his pack and unzipping it. He pulls out the camera case and starts to unzip it to hand her just the camera.

Sera takes the whole case before he can. He looks at her, disgruntled, but she just gives him an innocent smile. “It’s okay, right?” Sera asks.

“Of course,” he replies, his look lingering for a few seconds before he turns back around to continue walking.

She hangs as far back as she can as she flips through the images on the camera’s display furiously. The only photographs saved on the card in the camera are the photo’s he’s taken since they arrived in Japan together- nothing earlier. She riffles around in the camera’s bag and finds three little cases with memory cards inside. She’s just about to snap one open and exchange it for the card in the camera when she spots something odd about the case. There’s a tear in the side of the inside lining, wide enough for her to slip two fingers inside. She feels around inside the rip, and brushes against something flat and smooth. Using her fingers like tweezers, she pinches and pulls it out from hiding. It’s a card case, just like the others, except instead of clear plastic, it’s black.

She glances at Aiden to make sure he isn’t watching before she switches out the cards.

“ _Oh my god._ ” The words push out of her as the images from the card load. They flash by fast- to fast to really soak in individually, but there’s so many that it’s easy to get a clear picture. Jess from far away, Jess from behind trees and benches and bookcases and cars, Jess in the school through her classroom and housing room windows, Jess at what looks like a night beach party.

Jess at Naoko’s cabin.

Jess in the trees.

A close up of Jess’s eyes, wide, scared, blinded by the camera’s flash.

Sera can’t look any more. She doesn’t even feel the camera fall from her numb fingers. Her legs, which had quit working, now pedal her backwards.

“What the fuck, Sera?” Aiden curses when he hears his camera crash to the ground and the lens shatter. “What is the matter with you?!”

Sera doesn’t stop backing up until she’s at least fifteen feet away. “Where is Jess?” Sera asks slowly.

“How the fuck would I know? That’s why we’re in this goddamn mess to begin with, isn’t it?”

“What did you do to her?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You came here, I saw the pictures-”

“The pictures I’ve been taking? Of our trip?” he asks like it should be obvious.

“The pictures of Jess!” Sera snaps. “I saw them!”

Aiden looks surprised. “Look,” he says slowly, “I don’t know what you saw, but there are no pictures of Jess on that camera.”

“In the card, the one hidden in the bag,” Sera says.

“Sera, there’s no-”

“You had vacation days,” Sera interrupts, saying everything out loud as it all comes together. “Two weeks- that’s what your boss said. She said you already used a week. Erik said you’ve already been to Japan- when you told me you went to Oregon. That wasn’t a business trip, was it?”

“What are you accusing me of?”

“You didn’t go to Oregon. You came here. You did something to her, to my sister.”

“Do you hear yourself? You think I would fake a business trip, come all the way to Japan, and kill your sister? For what?”

Sera shakes her head. “I don’t know. I’m starting to think there’s a lot about you that I don’t know. But I know what I saw on that camera.”

“I don’t know what you think, or what you’re talking about,” Aiden says as though he’s trying to keep a panicked bull from charging. “There are no pictures of Jess on this camera, Sera. Look again.”

Sera shakes her head again, taking a step back for every step he takes toward her.

“Damn it, Sera,” he says, the patience in his voice wearing thin. “Take the camera.”

“No,” Sera says firmly.

“There are no pictures,” he says with thick exasperation. “Just look!”

“No!”

He charges forward and grabs her arm, trying to shove the camera in her face and force her to look. They struggle, and eventually Sera ends up falling on her back on the forest floor with the camera in her hand.

Sera scrambles backwards as Aiden stands over her, watching her. There’s something wrong about the look in his eyes. He doesn’t look like the Aiden she fell in love with at all.

With all her might, she tosses the camera as far as she can to her right. She scrambles away to the left and runs for her life.

“Sera!” she hears him calling for her.

The trees that once seemed so thick and concealing now feel entirely to spacious, to open to give her any cover. She runs and zigs and dodges and zags, desperate to put as much space between herself and Aiden as possible.

“Babe, you’re going to get lost!” Aiden calls out, and his voice sound distant.

Sera stops running to turn around to look.

“Come back!” he shouts.

She looks in the direction of his voice, but the plants and trees obscure him from view. She turns in the opposite direction and continues to run away.

“Sera!”

She runs until she reaches a small clearing, criss-crossed with downed trees. She hasn’t heard Aiden’s yells for the last couple of minutes, so she stops and tries to catch her breath. “No, no…” she hears herself mutter. She stumbles toward the roots of one of the downed trees, her head spinning as she tries to collect herself. A snail creeping along one of the upturned roots catches her scattered attention. It seems to be the only thing she can focus on for a long minute, until she forces herself to look away. She feels dizzy, unbalanced- like her fear is devouring her.

“Sera!” she hears Aiden’s distant call.

She looks in his direction, and sees a body hanging from one of the trees.

Sera takes off running again, fighting the fog in her head.

She has to get away.

She has to run.

She runs and runs until she’s completely out of breath and the stabbing pain in her side refuses to be ignored. She doesn’t know how long she’s been running, nor how far she’s gone, nor in what direction. All she knows is that the fog in her head seems to have cleared at least some, and that this part of the forest is considerably darker and colder than the rest. She clings to one of the nearby trees, drinking in air to sooth the burn in her lungs.

As she hangs on this tree, she takes in her surroundings. Ropes of different colors tangle through the trees- just like the one they followed to the hanging body. She can’t help but wonder if just around the corner, just behind one of the trees like the one she clings to, if there’s another hanging body. If there’s her sister.

She refuses to think about it. She can’t. She won’t allow her self to think Jess is dead.

She can’t be.

As she looks away from the colored ropes, her eyes fall on a roll of twine sitting on a tree trunk nearby. She pushes herself away from the tree that kept her upright, and limps over to the twine. Next to it is a pocket journal. She picks that up first and flips through it. The first few pages are written normally, but halfway through the words begin to become more scratched, darker, frantic- then plain chaotic. Sketches mingle with the drawings of hanging bodies, dark trees, shadow figures with horns. It isn’t until near the end of the book that she recognizes what the scribbled words say: _AMONGST THE TREES AMONGST THE TREES_ , over and over again- overlapping, upside down, running off the page.

Sera drops the journal and picks up the twine with purpose.

 

Naoko unzips the tent to find it empty. She looks all around the tent, checks around the perimeter, even calls out for Aiden and Sera a few times. It’s clear to her that they’re long gone.

“ _Baka_!”

 

Sera walks through the trees, holding the roll of twine so that it will unwind as she steps. She leaves a long trail of rope behind her, stopping occasionally to wind the cord around a tree.

Out of the corner of her eyes she can see shadows moving behind the trees, ducking just out of view if she tries to look directly at them. Eventually she gives up trying to catch a direct glimpse and keeps her eyes forward.

“ _Turn around_ ,” her instincts try to tell her. “ _Turn around Sera_.”

“No,” she says audibly, shaking her head and keeping her eyes resolutely forward. The shadows duck and run from tree to tree in her peripherals.

“ _Turn around Sera_.”

The cord gets tangled and she shakes it loose, keeping her watering eyes forward.

“ _Turn around Sera_.”

Her head shakes as she sees another shadow, right beside a tree she passes.

“ _Turn around Sera_.”

It’s gotten to the point that she’s not even sure if it’s her instincts or if it’s truly a voice she’s hearing, telling her to turn around.

“No!” she manages between choking back sobs. “You’re not real!”

The roll runs out of twine. She stops in her tracks, refusing to look anywhere but straight ahead. She can still see the shadows moving, just out of direct sight but close enough to see. A cold feeling overcomes her, like something is standing right behind her.

“Turn around, Sera.”

Sera breaks into a run, shoving smaller trees out of her way and pushing her way around the larger ones. The sharper twigs scrape at her arms, slap at her face, but she refuses to slow down or stop. The shadows are keeping up with her. She looks left and right rapidly, trying to get a look- trying to keep them in hiding with her gaze-

She screams as her foot comes down on nothing, and she falls. Her stomach drops- the air leaves her- and then her body smacks against the ground.

 

“I don’t need you to tell me this is my fault,” Naoko says to her mother in Japanese. They sit on a bench near the entrance to the forest’s path. “I already know that.”

Police busily move about, organizing hikers to do a search.

“I shouldn’t have left her in the forest. I’m worried something very bad is happening.”

The woman’s face contorts with sympathy as she looks at Naoko. Her hand barely touches Naoko’s back with comfort when the police signal Naoko over. The woman watches her daughter lead the officers down the path, pointing and explaining where they went, until she’s out of sight.


	9. Reveal What Can't Heal

Sera gasps in air and coughs it right back out when she wakes. Her whimpers echo around her as she pushes herself up, every muscle and bone protesting the movement. When she tries to move her leg, a sharp, shooting pain makes her scream out in agony. The pain is so intense that she nearly passes out again.

She forces herself to focus, forces herself to breathe. She manages to get on all fours, and push herself to a standing position without putting any pressure on her injured leg.

Everything around her is pitch black, other than a circle of lit-up leaves underneath her. Sera looks up to the light illuminating the leaves, and sees the hole that she fell through ten feet up. Sunlight pours through it, broken only by tree branches high in the sky.

There’s no going back up.

She looks around in the darkness for another way. Her eyes fall on nothing but blackness, until a glint of light catches her eye. It looks like an opening. Sera pulls the phone from her pocket and is thankful to find it unharmed. She turns on its flashlight and aims the beam toward the opening.

She limps over to the crack in the wall. It’s barely tall and wide enough for her to waddle her way inside it, bent over slightly to avoid hitting her head. As soon as she steps in, the air becomes drastically colder. She feels like she just stepped into an icebox.

Her pack, still strapped to her back, gets caught on the walls. She takes it off and carries at her side, her other hand holding out the phone so that she can see the path ahead. The father she hobbles, the tighter the passage becomes. She starts to wonder if she’s heading to a dead end- if she’s going to get stuck. Her breathing picks up. It becomes so narrow that she has to shimmy sideways just to fit.

She’s just about to turn back when the passage opens up to a large, open cave. Her phone light doesn’t reach the walls. If she thought the passage was an icebox, this room is the arctic. Her fingers are already going numb and shivers rack her body.

Her footsteps echo off the distant walls, giving the sense that the ceiling is far above her. Dripping water echos somewhere in the darkness as well, adding to the shuffling sound of her movements.

A deep, raspy noise that sounds like an inhale bounces off the walls. Sera turns around with wide eyes, aiming her light in all directions- trying to source where it came from. She sees nothing.

She picks up her pace- desperate to not get caught by something in this darkness. Her foot catches a rock and she tumbles forward, smacking the ground and sending her phone flying away from her. She crawls over to it, listening to the dragging sound her body makes against the ground, the pace of her breath, her pounding heart. All of it seems to loud, like a siren disclosing where she is. A dinner bell.

Her shaking fingers fumble picking up the phone before she’s able to get a good grip on it. As soon as she lifts it up, a voice echos through the black cave- the singsong voice of a girl, a child. It was to far away to make out clearly, but it almost sounded like it called her name.

Sera stands up as quietly as she can. She aims the light ahead of her, but the beam is swallowed into the black.

“Se-ra,” comes the singing voice again, this time distinctly calling her name.

Sera slowly turns around and aims her light behind her. It’s useless- the light isn’t powerful enough to penetrate the dark.

“ _Sera_ ,” a voice whispers right behind her.

Sera whips around, the phones light illuminating a smiling face.

“It’s me, Hoshiko,” the girl says, continuing the smile in an uncharacteristically happy kind of way. The wide grin somehow doesn’t reach her eyes.

“What are you doing down here?” Sera says steadily.

Hoshiko’s smile doesn’t waver. “Come.”

“Come where?”

“You come. Miss Jess, want to see you,” she says. She’s so excited that she nearly breaks out into giggles.

“Jess?” Sera gasps.

“I take you,” Hoshiko assures.

“Down here?” Sera asks, glancing around in the darkness.

Hoshiko nods and beckons Sera forward. Just as she starts to lead the way, another inhale-like sound echos off the walls, followed by a higher pitch sound that sounds like an echoed, distant scream.

“What is making that noise?” Sera asks.

Hoshiko stops and slowly turns around. Her smiling face emerges from the darkness, back into Sera’s light. “Animal,” she answers.

“That doesn’t sound like an animal,” Sera says.

Hoshiko ignores her as she turns away and continues to walk.

“Why is Jess down here?” Sera asks.

Hoshiko turns toward her again, her wide grin stretching even further, before she breaks into a sprint. Hoshiko’s uniform disappears from the light, and her footsteps fade away.

“Tell me!” Sera calls, her voice bouncing back to her. She hobbles as fast as she can- trying to keep up.

Eventually she comes to part of the cave that has a split of light seeping down from a crack above. In this tiny bit of blue light, Hoshiko stands perfectly still. Sera can barely make out her silhouette against the blackness.

The hair on the back of Sera’s neck stands upright. She wants to call out Hoshiko’s name, but the knot in her throat refuses to let her. Slowly, Sera lifts up the phone’s light from the ground. The beam illuminates Hoshiko’s legs, skirt, shirt- Once the light reaches Hoshiko’s face, it reveals a smile that literally splits Hoshiko’s face in half. Jagged teeth shine in the blackness of her mouth.

The light shakes in Sera’s hand as she stares- to afraid to move, to afraid to blink.

Hoshiko’s head jerks and a long, moaning growl pierces the air.

Sera takes off running- ignoring the pain in her leg as much as she can to run with all the speed she can muster. The sound Hoshiko made follows her as she runs, echoing tauntingly on the walls.

Amazingly, she spots light coming through a hole in a distant wall. She sprints for it, and squeezes herself through. She comes to an open area like the one that she started in, floored with leaves and lit by a hole in the ceiling to far to reach. She stands under the light and looks up to the sky.

“Help!” she screams. “You’ve- kidding me-” she mumbles as sobs start to rack through her. “ _Help_!” She screams at the top of her lungs, but it feels like the only things listening for miles and miles are the trees. “Help!” she shouts one last time, about ready to helplessly fall to her knees.

“Sera?”

Her eyes fly back up to the hole. “Aiden?” she calls back.

Aiden’s face appears at the top of the hole. “Sera?”

“Aiden! You’ve got to get me out of here,” she cries.

“Hold on, I’m going to find something to throw down for you,” Aiden says and disappears from view.

“ _No_ , no! Don’t leave, don’t leave me please! No!” Sera shouts, her arms reaching up in vain.

The inhale noise, now recognizable as Hoshiko’s echoed growl, faintly spills from the hole in the wall that she emerged from.

“No,” Sera whispers to herself. She closes her eyes, and slowly sinks to her knees. She tries to calm her breathing. “No,” she says again. “If you see anything bad, it’s not real, it’s in your head,” Sera says, remembering what Naoko told her. She chants the words over and over, holding her head in her hands, trying to convince herself that they’re true. “If you see anything bad, it’s not real, it’s in your head. It’s in your head. It’s in your head.” Silence wraps around her. No echos. No birds. No bugs. Just silence.

She whispers one more time, “It’s in your head.” Her eyes open.

The only noise is the buzzing of a fly, that crosses her line of sight. She watches it as it twirls around in the air, and comes to rest on the corner of something burgundy and plastic sticking up out of the leaves. Numbly, Sera reaches for it and drags it out from the underbrush. She recognizes it immediately.

A viewfinder, exactly like the one she used when she was little. She lifts it up to her eyes in a kind of daze- not fully feeling like her actions are her own. Her finger finds the lever on the side, and pulls it down. Once her finger slides off of it and it snaps back up- a frame comes into view. Its her, and Jess, and their grandmother- sitting on the ratty couch. They looking up to their grandmother with worry on their faces- no older than the age of six.

She snaps the lever again, and a door takes up the frame.

Again, and she sees the back of her grandmother’s head as they head down the stares. Jess is ahead of her.

Again, and she sees Jess’s face illuminated by the basement’s light. The look of horror is frozen on her features.

Again, and she gasps. Her mother’s body lay on the floor. Her head is pooled by blood. Again, her father’s body now- on the floor with a rifle beside him.

This must be what Jess saw.

She never looked before.

She refuses to look away now.

Slowly, she pulls the viewfinder’s lever, and releases it.

Jess, adult Jess, lay on the basement floor, blood around her head.

“No-” Sera whimpers.

There’s a hole in Jess’s temple. Her eyes are open, but vacant. Dead, just like her parents-

Jess’s eyes shift, directly staring into Sera’s.

Sera screams and throws the viewfinder. It shatters when it hits the stone wall. Sera writhes and cries. In this moment, she feels like she’ll never leave this hole again.

“Sera, hold on,” Aiden says from above, and tosses her down one end of a rope.

“Aiden-”

“Put your foot in that, and hold on.”

Sera stands and holds on to the rope for dear life, stepping into the noose at it’s end. “Please- Please get me out of here,” she begs.

Aiden sits on the ground and leverages the rope up one heave at a time. Slowly Sera is lifted up out of the darkness, and up onto the ground. She crawls away from the edge and collapses, Aiden sprawling out as well.

Sera presses her face into the ground as silent screams and sobs grab onto her and won’t let her go.

“Hey,” Aiden says and sits up. “Sera, are you okay?”

She can’t speak. She can barely push herself up enough so that her face isn’t plastered into the leaves anymore. All she can do to answer is shake her head.

When the agony passes and she’s able to compose herself, she pushes herself onto her hands and knees. “Naoko was right,” Sera says to the patiently waiting Aiden. “The forest does make you see things.”

“Look,” Aiden says. “I found a place that might have a radio. It’s a ranger’s station, it’s not that far.”

Sera turns over so that she’s sitting. “You just- stumbled across it? Right now?”

Aiden can tell she’s still not trusting, so he takes off his pack and unzips it. She watches him leerily. He rifles around and ends up pulling out a sheathed knife. He holds it out to her, handle first. “Here,” he says.

She stares at it blankly.

“Take the knife,” he insists.

“Why am I taking the knife?” she asks.

“So you’ll trust me, like you did before we came into this fucking forest,” he says. As she takes the blade, he says, “We’re in this together, right?”

Shame shows in her nod. “Right.”

Aiden stands up and replaces his pack. He holds out a hand to help her up, and she gratefully accepts.


	10. Leave Behind

The forest starts to feel as cold as the caves once the sun goes down. Sera’s leg feels good enough to walk on now, as long as she’s careful with it, which allows her to follow Aiden through the dark with relative ease. She wishes she wouldn’t have lost her pack in the caves- which had her sweater inside. The phone, too, is gone. She didn’t even notice she had dropped them until she needed them again.

Finally Aiden slows to a stop and Sera steps up beside him.

“Well, if there isn’t a radio, at least we’ve got a place to sleep,” he says, gesturing forward.

Sera misses the little shack at first, thanks to the darkness and how overgrown it is. The wood is rough and looks like it’s barely holding together. The entrance is overshadowed by the roof, making it look like a dark hole with a ceiling. She’s not particularly fond of the idea of going inside, but follows Aiden without complaint.

Aiden’s the one to open the door. It swings open with protesting hinges. “Hello?” Aiden calls into the building as he steps inside.

No one responds. Sera follows after him. When her eyes adjust, she sees the place is mostly empty other than some dusty tables, random junk like old tools, and an old sleeping bag on the floor. The place looks more like an abandoned tool shed than a ranger’s station.

Aiden sets his pack on one of the tables and glances around. He spots a radio on one of the tables on the far side of the room and strides over to it.

Something blue catches Sera’s eye, on the floor next to the sleeping bag.

“Come on, baby, come on- work,” Aiden coaxes as he flips switches and tries to bring the radio to life.

Sera walks over to the sleeping bag to look at the blue things closer. They’re wrappers, dust free and new. Not only do they look recent, but she’s seen these before. Blue, covered in Japanese text- she’s sure that these are the same powerbars that Aiden fed her the night before.

“Hey, Sera?” Aiden asks without turning away from the radio. “Give me the knife.”

Sera turns away from the wrappers to look at Aiden’s turned back. “What?”

“The knife, let me have it,” he says again.

“Why?” she asks.

“So I can open this thing up,” he says impatiently, looking at her now.

Sera doesn’t move from where she stands, clutching the knife tightly.

“Or I can smash it on the damn table! Just give me the knife!” he shouts.

Sera flinches. Reluctantly, she holds out the blade. He snatches it from her, continues to stare at her, then sets back to work on the radio.

She listens to him as she steps further into the building. The place is larger than a tool shed, she discovers, when she finds a hall that leads to a kitchen. A mouse scurries along one of the shelves, making her startle.

A door stands on the opposite side of the kitchen. She walks to it and twists the knob, but the door is locked.

“Why do you think they locked the basement?” she calls to Aiden.

“Why do you think it’s a basement?”

“What else would it be?” she asks.

“I don’t know… a closet?” he says distractedly.

Thump, thump, thump.

Sera looks down at her feet. The thuds are coming from beneath her- like footsteps up a staircase. She hears them continue steadily all the way up to the door.

“Sera?” she hears a whisper.

“Jess?” Sera whispers back and presses herself to the door. She glances over her shoulder to make sure Aiden is still preoccupied. “Jess?” she whispers again, even quieter this time.

“Shh-” the person on the other side hushes.

A sliding noise at her feet makes Sera look down. A piece of paper pushes out from under the door. Glancing back again to make sure Aiden isn’t watching, Sera kneels down and picks the paper up slowly. Still knelt, she unfolds it and a piece of charcoal rolls into her hand. The paper reads: “Is Aiden there?”

Sera gasps and looks over her shoulder one more time. Aiden is still preoccupied with the radio. She holds the paper to the door and writes “YES” with the charcoal before pushing it back under the door.

Sera’s eyes stay glued on Aiden’s back until she hears the paper slide out again. “He will kill us. Get the key,” it says.

She has to bite her lip to keep from making a fearful noise. “Okay,” she whispers and slides the paper back under the door. “Okay.”

“Please be real,” Jess says from the other side.

As quietly as she can, Sera sifts through the kitchen. Her hands dust over the dirty counter tops, on top of shelves, behind broken containers. She dares to open some of the drawers, praying silently that they won’t make a noise.

“Do you want to chow down before it gets to dark to see?” Aiden calls from the other room. By the sound of it he’s abandoned working on the radio.

Sera feels around in the drawer she just opened and finds a rusted kitchen knife. She lifts it out of the drawer slowly.

“Sera, what’re you doing?” Aiden asks as he unzips his pack.

Her fingers tighten around the handle of the blade. She holds it behind her leg as she walks back into the main area. Aiden sits in front of the radio again.

He holds out one of the power bars. “Here, it’s the last one. You can have it.”

Sera steps closer steadily, but makes no move to take the bar.

“Go on, take it,” Aiden eggs.

She keeps her breathing as steady as she can through her nose. She’s within five feet of him now. They stare at each other when she stops. Just when confusion dawns on his face, she grabs the wrist of the hand extending the bar to her. She strides forward and presses the blade against Aiden’s throat.

“I don’t know if the forest made you a psycho, or if you were crazy anyways,” Sera says measuredly. “But if you don’t let my sister out of that basement, I will kill you.”

“Sera,” Aiden says sternly with just as much measure. “Wake _up_! Your sister is dead! She’s been in here for five days!”

Sera’s face contorts as she presses the knife against his neck even harder, drawing a trickle of blood.

“Okay! Alright- okay, I’ll- I’ll let her out, okay?” Aiden pleads. “Just let me get the key.”

“Where is it,” Sera demands.

“It’s in my boot,” Aiden answers. “Let me get it.”

Sera reluctantly nods. Just as she starts to back away, Aiden grabs her wrist and launches to his feet.

They struggle, both of them trying to turn the blade at each other. Sera doesn’t have the strength to fight him, however. He easily throws her backwards. She manages to cling to him and trip him into falling with her. He lands on top of her with a sicking slicing sound.

Sera’s wide eyes stare up at the man on top of her. Aiden’s eyes go wide, too, as he looks down between them. The knife in Sera’s hand is buried in his chest.

He looks away from the knife to look at Sera. She would rather him be angry- but instead he looks confused. Scared. He coughs and rolls off of her unceremoniously. The blade snaps off in his chest, leaving only the handle in Sera’s hand.

Sera sits up and looks from her shaking hand, covered in blood, to the bleeding wound in Aiden’s chest. He feebly presses his hand over the wound as he coughs more- the coughs becoming more and more panicked.

Sera backs up meekly. An internal tremor takes her over when she realizes what she’s done. She’s killed him. He’s dying.

Aiden begins to flail, and she can’t stand to watch. She looks back toward the basement door through the kitchen. “Jess-”

The door creaks open, just a crack. Out-of-place light spills from around it’s edges. Sera tries to reason what the light could be, how the door could have opened.

“She’s not here,” Aiden forces out.

Her eyes fall back on the bloody handle in her hand, then travel shakily to Aiden.

His fearful eyes fix on hers. He makes a choked gurgle, then goes completely still.

The blade’s handle falls from her hand and clatters on the floor. In a stunned fog she looks back to the back-lit basement door. “Jess,” she whimpers, getting to her feet. One stumbled step at a time, Sera walks to the door. Trembling fingers push the creaking door open to reveal a yellow-lit staircase.

Jess, the age of six, stands at the bottom, looking up at her. Jess looks away from Sera and into the basement. Her eyes go wide, horror spreads across her features.

“Jess, no stop! Don’t look, don’t look!” Sera pleas and flies down the stairs. She reaches her sister and covers her eyes as she pulls her into her chest. “Don’t look,” she says one more time as she looks over her shoulder herself.

The air leaves her when she sees her mother, clearer than she’s ever seen her, laying on the ground, a bullet hole in her forehead, and blood pooled around her. Her eyes are open. Lifeless.

Across the room lay her father, propped against the wall, rifle at his side. His shadowed eyes are closed. His skin seems to pale, to sunken, to still.

“Oh, god. Daddy, why…”

Her father bursts out with a guttural scream as his eyes shoot open. He leans forward away from the wall, folding over until he lay face down on the ground. Jerking and writhing, screeching and clawing, he moves across the ground- crawling toward the stairs.

“Go!” Sera shouts to Jess, pushing her up the stairs, ushering her to run. Sera is just about to follow behind her when her cut arm is snatched.

She looks back to see her father, sunken eyes and teeth bared, holding her arm impossibly tight. He yanks and claws and pulls.

“Daddy, daddy no! Let me go!” Sera begs through her hysteric crying. He continues his animalistic screeching as his dead, monstrous eyes boar into her own. She has to hold onto the stairs’ railing to keep from being dragged down. “Let-” she says and kicks his face. “Me-” another kick, this time hitting him directly in the jaw. “Go!” she screams as loud as she can and kicks down with all of her might- slamming him in the jaw and knocking him loose. She runs up the stairs, throws the door shut behind her, and bursts out of the house. She can still hear her father’s screams echoing around her and she runs at break-neck speed through the trees. Shadows dance all around her, pale bodies flash past her with the trees. She tries to glance them- tries to look- but every time she does they dart out of view.

She doesn’t dare stop, she doesn’t dare slow, she doesn’t dare look back.


	11. Demons Amongst The Trees

A dozen flashlight beams comb the trees.

“Sera!”

“Jess!”

“Sera!”

The search team’s calls are swallowed into the endless trees as they tiredly search.

“We need to turn back,” the head of the police says in Japanese. He starts to order everyone to turn back.

Naoko desperately wants to stop them from abandoning their efforts, but knows better than to speak out. This search is like trying to find a microscopic needle in a sea of hay- with a blindfold on.

She faces the forest one last time. “Sera!” she calls with all of her might. Her voice echos several times before fading completely.

By morning, it will likely be a body they search for. If it isn’t already.

 

Sera’s lungs are lit on fire as she sprints through the trees. The shadows close in on her, the trees snag and grab at her as though they’re trying to hold her back, the pale bodies stand tauntingly in her path, making her have to dodge and jeer out of the way.

“ _The monsters come_ ,” voices tauntingly sing- both child singsong and growling rasps alike.

“ _And leave us numb_.”

Sera screams to try and block them out, but they continue to recite.

“ _We’re broken, bleeding, and blind._ ”

The branches tear at her shirt, cut at her exposed skin.

“ _A long hard look, to every nook, and cranny of our mind_.”

The pain in her legs plead with her to stop but she ignores it- she ignores it all to keep running.

“ _Just might reveal, what we can’t heal, or simply leave behind_.”

Her running becomes frenzied. She can’t tell if she’s going in circles, with as much as she’s dodging. She throws her arms around, trying to toss away branches and bodies in her path. Her feet trip and stumble, but somehow she keeps going.

“ _The demons we see, amongst the trees_ ,” their voices are so loud- not screaming but incredibly loud, “ _pain and suffering refined_ -”

“Help! Oh god, somebody please! Help me!”

Sera comes to a halt when she hears the screaming. The shadows, bodies, and taunting reciting all disappear. She listens.

“Help me! Please!” comes the shouts again.

“Jess?” Sera calls breathlessly. “Jess!”

She dashes through the trees in the direction of the voice. It sounded so real- it just had to be Jess. She can feel it. There are no more shadows, there are no more bodies, there are no taunting voices reciting the goddamn poem.

Sera comes to a stop in a small, treeless clearing. On the other side, not but fifteen feet away, stands her sister. “Jess!” Sera sobs and runs forward.

Her face falls with her heart when she reaches her. Jess isn’t standing before her. A mirror stands in the leaves, reflecting the image of Jess where Sera should be standing.

“Sera,” Jess says softly, lovingly.

Sera shakes her head, staring at her sister’s image.

“It’s okay,” Jess comforts.

The leaves rustle all around her. Sera turns to look and sees mirrors standing in a wide circle around her. Sera looks back to the glass in front of her. “You aren’t real.”

“I am,” Jess says with a weak, sympathetic smile. “Oh, Sera, I am real.”

“No, no,” Sera says and smiles deliriously. “This isn’t real. None of this, is real.” She screws her eyes shut and takes three steps back. “If you see anything bad, it’s not real, it’s in your head.”

“Of course it’s in your head. That doesn’t make it any less real.”

Sera opens her fearful eyes.

Jess raises two fingers and tapes them to her temple. “The damage the forest does. That’s real. We’re proof of that.”

“You’re not Jess,” Sera asserts.

“I am,” the reflection says, never losing the sympathetic kindness to her tone.

“Where is Jess?!” Sera demands.

“I’m here,” the image pleas.

“No, you’re not her!” Sera bends down and finds a fist-sized rock. With a running start, she throws it at the mirror. The stone decimates the glass, sending it shattering to the ground.

“Sera,” Jess calls from a different mirror.

She finds another stone and smashes it, too.

“Listen to me,” Jess begs.

“You’re not real!” Sera shouts and finds another rock. She shatters the next mirror to reflect Jess’s image. Her images shows up in another mirror. She smashes it. And the next, and the next.

Finally only one mirror remains.

Jess appears on it’s surface, looking sad, and frustrated.

“You are not real!” Sera shouts, this time running for the mirror. She rears back the stone in her hand and swings forward.

“I am,” Jess says just before the rock in Sera’s fist meets the glass and the final mirror comes crumbling down. Jess still remains, no longer a reflection, but a real form standing before Sera in the pile of shattered mirror. “You aren’t.”

Sera flails backwards and nearly falls. “Jess?”

“I’m so sorry, Sera. I am real. You are not.”

Sera’s brow furrows as she tries to understand.

“I created you. You’re a fragment of my mind- a personality I made, to survive the forest.”

“I… don’t…” Sera whispers.

Jess steps forward, and Sera involuntarily mirrors the movement. Jess takes another step, and Sera is forced to copy it- as though she is a glassless reflection.

They end up face to face. “I’ve always been close to breaking, ever since Mom and Dad.”

Sera shouts when her vision is taken over by images, memories. She’s shown the night her parents died- but Sera isn’t there. It’s just Jess sitting on the couch. It’s just Jess and her grandmother going down the stairs. Her vision clears, leaving her breathless. “What’s happening?”

“After college I moved to Florida, but things never got better.”

More images invade Sera’s vision, but this time the images are completely unfamiliar. They’re Jess’s memories- pushed into her as though they were her own. Pictures of her moving into the apartment in Florida, images of her partying, of her crying in front of a mirror, of her going to a doctor, filling prescriptions, breaking everything in arm’s reach.

“After grandma died…”

Sera sees herself as Jess, packing up all of her grandmother’s belongings in boxes alone.

Sera was there- Sera remembers standing right there packing that jar, remembers Jess calling it an urn and laughing at her when she believed her. But in these images, in these invading memories, Jess is the only one there- fighting back tears as she tapes up cardboard boxes.

“I used what money she left me to moved to Japan and start over.”

Sera sees it all. Jess moving to Japan, getting the teaching job, settling in in the room the school supplied. Jess laughing with her class. Jess eating out. Jess relaxing, reading the unsigned book of Sara Teasdale’s poems.

“Everything was okay, for a while. I was doing better, the pills were working…”

Images of orange pill bottles- for anxiety, for depression, for PTSD.

“But then we took a trip to Aokigahara. One of the stops was Naoko’s mother’s gift shop. While the students were inside, I took a smoke break. And I saw her.”

Jess doesn’t need to tell. Sera can see it herself. Jess, leaning on the rail of the porch that wrapped around Naoko’s house. The cigarette falls from her lips. Their mother stands amongst the trees, wearing what she did when she died. Blood covers half of her face. A hole is prominent in her forehead.

“I chased after her,” Jess continues when the images end and Sera can see normally once more. “She was always to far ahead of me, always out of my reach. Finally I turned back before I got turned around. But I couldn’t get the image of her out of my mind.”

Their mother in the trees flashes multiple times behind Sera’s eyes.

“The forest took hold of me. It was all I could think about. It lured me in.”

Sera sees Jess hiking into the forest alone, setting up the tent.

“It broke me.”

Jess runs through the trees, camp abandoned, to chase after the image of her mother. Then her father appears, hanging by a rope, decaying, rotting flesh falling off his bones. Flashes of her mother, impaled by branches and covered in blood. Taunting voices echo through the trees, egging Jess to follow in their footsteps. Shadows always just out of sight teasing in singsong voices, reminding Jess that she was all alone in the world- that she could never outrun her past.

Sera gasps at the sights and goes limp- wanting to fall backwards, wanting to run away- but she’s held in place. Her only movements are the movements that Jess makes.

“I don’t know how, I don’t remember, but I got out before the forest got me. The damage was done, though. Even as I ran away, safely out of the trees, I could feel it. It wanted me to come back, it wanted me to die. I wanted to go back. I wanted to die.

“The forest was calling me, like a sound to low to hear, but could be felt like a hum in my chest. It was calling me back. It wanted me, so I became you.”

Sera’s head spins. Like an elevator drop, she feels like all of her insides fell to her feet. Her skin goes numb.

“It all happened so fast… It’s a blur-”

She sees Jess go straight to her room at the school in the middle of the night. All she grabs is her wallet and passport.

Then she’s at the airport, cleaning herself of blood and dirt in the bathroom.

Then she sees her plane touch down in the states, in New York. She sees her max her credit card on buying supplies and renting a penthouse in the nearest expensive hotel. The inside is identical to what Sera knew as the home she shared with Aiden.

She sees Jess standing over the bathroom sink, bleaching her dark hair as white as she can get it and cutting it shorter.

Most bizarre is she sees her acting out scenes that Sera recognizes as her own memories. Conversations with Aiden, only without Aiden even existing- just Jess speaking to herself. Jess filling the closet with clothes she stole from the laundromat- clothes that Sera has memories of buying in stores.

“My god…” Sera whimpers. “Aiden… All of my memories… All of _me_ …”

“Fabrications,” Jess says softly. “I couldn’t bare what I went through alone, even as you. So my mind created Aiden for company. My mind altered my memories, making a twin to bare the burden of my past, so that I could live free without it.

“You were my coping mechanism, the only way I could keep myself away from the forest, away from suicide. Even so… Even after all I forgot, all I gave up, all the distance I traveled to escape… the forest followed.”

Jess’s hand reaches up, as does Sera’s, until their fingers touch the identical pendants around their own necks. Sera’s eyes lock on the necklace around Jess’s neck, the same one that she knows her own fingers are touching. A dark stone with a black cord running through it.

“Part of the forest was always with me, all along. I forgot to much to fast to know better.”

Sera sees Jess in the tourist shop, just before she catches sight of her mother in the trees. She’s buying the necklace there, advertised as “Stone From Aokigahara- Poem Inside!”.

Sera lets out a choked cry.

“You should have stayed away. Maybe if you had, none of this would have happened. But the forest wasn’t going to let that happen. It tricked you into looking for me.”

All of Sera’s recent memories flash before her eyes- but shown not as she remembers them, but in earnest. She was alone, talking to herself in that airport. It was Hoshiko that she saw in the crowd, and in the street when she landed- fabrications of the forest. She was alone in the taxi. She was alone on the train.

All this time she thought she was accompanied by Aiden, in reality she was alone. She unwittingly traversed her own footsteps, showing pictures of her old self to people claiming she was looking for a twin that didn’t exist.

She marched herself into Aokigahara, looking for _herself_.


	12. Pain and Suffering

The force that was making Sera mimic Jess’s movements drops. Sera falls to her knees and lets silent sobs crash over her. “I’m- not real?”

Jess crouches down to kneel in front of Sera. “You are real,” she comforts, “just not in the way you thought. You are me. We are fragments of a broken mind. We are Jess.”

Sera’s scared and confused eyes dance over the leaves on the ground. It all starts to click into place. The weird looks she’d get when she talked to Aiden in public- the fact no one ever addressed Aiden directly… She can see the memories clearly now- as though she’s looking in from the outside. Aiden was never there at all.

Jess never answered her calls because Sera was calling her own, old number.

No one questioned that Sera was a twin because of how drastically different she looked from the photos she showed people.

The photos…

Sera shakes as she reaches for the photo that she slipped into her back pocket what feels like years ago- the photo she took from Jess’s room at the school. She holds it face down in her hand as Jess watches silently.

The last time Sera looked at this image, it was of her and Jess standing together in the same clothes, in front of their grandmother’s house.

When she turns the photograph over, only one little girl is pictured. She smiles wide, her pigtails are flipped up in the wind, the ice-cream in her hand is melting over her fingers. She is alone.

“I can’t do it,” Sera wails as the sobs take her over again. “If this is true… If I’m you- If I’m Jess?” She shakes her head and desperately suppresses the desire to scream.

“I know,” Jess says soothingly. “We’re broken. Our heart’s been bleeding since the day Mom and Dad died. We’ve had to shoulder that impossible burden for so long- we’ve had to live with what happened, what we saw.”

The memory of her parents lying on the basement floor creeps up on her like slowly raising flood water until it’s all she can think about- all she can see. The blood. The gun. The tossed over lamp. Their bodies, their bodies, their bodies…

“It’s time to let go,” Jess whispers, pulling Sera back from the memory.

Sera looks up into Jess’s sad, sure eyes.

“We tried. We looked for another way… but it always comes back to this. It will always lead to this.” Jess holds up an inviting hand. “We knew for a long time that, this is how it was meant to end for us. There’s no escaping the fate we’ve been fighting our whole life.”

Sera’s shaking fingers reach up to lace with Jess’s.

Jess smiles kindly. “ _We will come down at night to these resounding beaches,”_ she recites, _“And the long gentle thunder of the sea, Here for a single hour in the wide starlight…_ ”

Sera recognizes the Sara Teasdale poem as though it were one she memorized herself. They finish it together.

“ _We shall be happy, for the dead are free._ ”

Together, they close their eyes. The sensation of warm smoke billows up her arm from where their hands are joined. It travels up her neck, across her back.

When she finally opens her eyes, she’s alone.

 

It’s a long cold walk back to the cabin for Naoko. The police have departed, promising to resume the search at daybreak, but Naoko knows better. If they didn’t find her tonight, it will be to late.

Her legs feel numb by the time she enters the front door.

“Naoko,” her mother says as soon as she’s through.

“We didn’t find her,” Naoko cuts her off before she can ask.

Her mother looks sad but not all to surprised. “Naoko-”

The last thing Naoko wants to hear is her mother’s sympathy. “I’m going to bed,” she says and makes her way for the door.

“But, Nao-”

“Look, I don’t want to hear it!” she snaps. “I just can’t, not tonight!”

“You have a guest,” her mother says with tight lips.

Naoko’s brows furrow. She turns around to find the timid guest standing in the middle of the store. She wasn’t expecting anyone to be here, not in the middle of the night. “Who the hell are _you_?”

 

She backtracks through the trees. There are no more shadows dancing out of the corner of her eyes. There are no bodies blocking her path. The trees, though cloaked in darkness from the night, feel empty. The forest feels like nothing more than a grouping of trees on a mountain in Japan.

The sun just starts to lighten the sky, just enough for the black to turn dark blue, when she manages to find the ranger station. She stops before approaching the door. It all comes down to this one, simple test.

She needed proof that she is Jess- more than the memories and feelings swimming in her mind.

She can’t trust her mind.

But if Aiden’s body lays on the floor, she’ll know she was being tricked. She’ll know for sure that the forest was trying to cloud her.

If Aiden isn’t there, it will be proof that she’s insane. It will be proof that Sera was nothing more than the result of a cracked psyche desperate to stay alive. The forest can make you see many dark, miserable things, but that’s all it can do. Hallucinations. Visions. The forest cannot remove a body.

Aiden will be her proof. Proof she’s a murderer, or proof that she’s insane. Proof that she’s Sera, or proof that she’s Jess.

She pushes the door until it swings open into the dark room. Shadow hides anything inside from view.

Her eyes slip shut, and she takes a deep breath. She doesn’t open her eyes until she steps through the threshold into the room. The floorboards creak under her weight, interrupting the silence.

When her eyes open, they fall on an empty floor. Where Aiden’s body should lay, only a rusty blade stands- stuck into the wooden floor.

She closes her eyes and shakes her head when tears threaten to fall once again. She steps over to the blade and pries it out of the floorboard.

How crazy must she have looked, wrestling with no one for a blade that she ended up breaking off in the floor? All because she believed her twin was behind the basement door.

She glances through the kitchen as she remembers the door- only to find a blank wall.

No tears comes now. She surprises herself, instead, with a weak smile and a shake of the head. So much was the product of her broken mind.

She faces the door and sits cross-legged where Aiden’s body and blood should be. Her fingers covet the rusty metal of the broken blade.

She’s attempted twice before. The same sickness that took her parents has been fighting to take her, as well.

No matter what path she takes, no matter how far she runs, no matter what help she seeks- it will always come down to this.

There is no escaping her fate.

There is no escaping the forest.


	13. Shadows in the Forest

“Tell me your story again,” Naoko says as they hike through the trees, lit only by the barely rising sun.

“Why?” Aiden asks with exasperation. “I’ve told you and your mother a total of three times now. Don’t you believe me?”

“I agreed to take you out here before the sun was completely risen, before the police resumed their search. I think I deserve to make sure your story doesn’t change,” Naoko insists.

Aiden sighs, but retells his account of what happened. “She woke up in a fit a week or so ago, worried about her sister, Jess. I told her it wasn’t a good idea to run off to Japan in the middle of the night, that she should wait until morning. I left to use the bathroom. When I tried to leave the bathroom, the door was blocked from the outside. I was trapped in there for the entire day until one of my colleagues came to check on me, and let me out.

“Sera had taken my phone, my credit cards, my passport- wallet- everything I needed to follow her to Japan. It took me this long to get here and retrace her footsteps. I tried calling her phone, my phone- but it all went straight to voice-mail. I… I should have known that she wasn’t going to wait until morning. Jess means everything to Sera. I don’t know what she’d do if she ever lost her.”

Naoko’s jaw tightens. She says nothing as she continues toward Jess’s tent.

Half an hour more of silent walking, Naoko suddenly stops.

“What is-” Aiden starts but is immediately hushed.

He looks around and listens, just as Naoko does- and hears it himself. The sound of running footsteps, and crying.

“Hello?” Naoko calls.

The footsteps stop.

Naoko tosses an uneasy glance to Aiden before hiking in the direction of the steps. “Is someone there? We’re here to help.”

“Who are you?” returns the voice. “Are- Are you real? Prove that you’re real.”

“My name is Naoko,” Naoko says carefully, trying to find the source of the voice hidden in the trees. “We are looking for a friend. We can show you the path out of the forest if you’re lost.”

Out of the trees emerges the person behind the voice.

“Sera!” Aiden gasps and takes two running steps forward before he slows. “J-Jess-” he stammers. “Jess, you’re alright!” Naoko holds him back from running to her.

Jess shakes. Her eyes are wild, her hair is ratted, her clothes are torn and filthy. “You’re not real.”

“We are real,” Naoko says carefully. “We’ve been looking for you. Your sister came all this way to find you.”

Jess’s eyes shift from Naoko to Aiden, clearly wanting to believe.

“I know what you must have gone through- what you must have seen. You’ve been out here for so long. But if you can take one more chance- if you can believe on more time, we can lead you out of here. Jess we can lead you out of the forest.” Naoko holds out her hand.

Jess’s cut up hand quakes as it slowly reaches out, and accepts the offer.

 

Jess held together when they crossed over rope that barred the path they took from the main path. She didn’t believe even as they walked down the wide, well kept path that she was truly safe. It wasn’t until they reached the road that she fell to the ground in screaming sobs of relief.

The ambulance nearby took care of her- cleaned and patched up her wounds, gave her water and food, and wrapped her in an orange blanket. As soon as Jess found out that the search party and ambulance wasn’t for her, but for Sera, Jess nearly ran right back into Aokigahara. She was forced to stay. As much as Aiden wanted to actively search for Sera himself, he stayed behind to make sure Jess didn’t do anything rash and get herself lost again.

It was noon when Naoko returned to them.

Immediately Jess and Aiden were on their feet.

“Anything?” Aiden asked.

Naoko nods, but the somber look in her face keeps them from celebrating.

Despite Naoko’s firm requests that Jess not go to see, despite the paramedics telling Jess that she shouldn’t exert herself- Jess demanded that Naoko lead her to Sera.

Wordlessly the three of them walked, as fast as Jess was capable, into the forest. It was late afternoon when they finally reached the abandoned ranger station.

“She shouldn’t be here,” the police chief says gruffly in Japanese.

“I need to see her,” Jess demands. “I have to see her.”

The police chief doesn’t like it, but Jess doesn’t care. She abandons her shock blanket and makes a break for the door.

She screams at the sight of her sister’s body collapsed on the floor, blood pooled around her slit arm, eyes open, emotionless, and still. Jess runs to her and clings to her body. Trying to wake her, trying to bring her back. It takes two men to pull Jess off of her. Even then Jess’s grip drags down Sera’s arm and empties what was grasped in her hand into Jess’s own. When she’s removed outside, she shoves Aiden and Naoko away from her.

She only makes it a little way down the path before she falls to her knees. After the initial crashing wave of shock and wailing passes, feeling returns to her hands. She opens her clenched fists to find what was in Sera’s. The necklace Jess had gifted her- the black stone with a cord running through it. Sera had this piece of Jess with her the whole time she was searching for her. She had it with her in her last moments. This is the last piece of Sera Jess has left. Jess’s fingers grasp around it possessively as more tears rip from her. Painfully she forces her attention onto the other object- a piece of paper. Jess rips the paper open and reads.

 

_The monsters come_

_And leave us numb._

_We’re broken, bleeding, and blind._

 

_A long hard look_

_To every nook_

_And cranny of our mind-_

 

_Just might reveal_

_What we can’t heal_

_Or simply leave behind._

 

_The demons we see_

_Amongst the trees,_

_Pain and suffering refined-_

 

_In this world they are not,_

_But leave us no less distraught._

_No less evil,_

_No less lethal,_

_Shadows in the forest of the mind._


End file.
